Crypto-basher economist Nouriel Roubini is developing a tokenised asset designed to counter the volatility of the U.S. dollar due to inflation, climate change, and more.
According to Bloomberg’s report, Roubini is developing a tokenised U.S. dollar backed by a physical asset in partnership with the Dubai-based firm Atlas Capital Team he co-founded.
Rubini says：
“We recognized that America’s dollar reserve currency could be at risk and are working to create a new instrument that’s effectively a more resilient dollar,”
The launch token will be issued later this year. Unlike traditional cryptocurrencies, which are usually not backed by any asset, the token is backed by U.S. real estate, primarily in the form of a REIT.
A real estate investment trust, also known as a real estate trust, real estate trust; is an investment vehicle similar to a closed-end mutual fund, but the investment object is real estate. Mainly through the securitisation of real estate and the fundraising of many investors, ordinary investors without huge capital can participate in the real estate market with a lower threshold and obtain the profits brought by real estate market transactions, rents and appreciation.
Therefore, REITs are less affected by short-term US Treasuries, gold and climate change.
Roubini, who has publicly denounced Bitcoin, Ethereum and blockchain technology for years, sees the product as an opportunity to provide value to people who have no access to the dollar and whose national currencies are devalued.
The day is here. In a few hours, El Salvador’s Bitcoin Law goes into effect. We will have the first real-world example of a whole nation using the hardest money ever created as legal tender. And, how is the Bitcoin community celebrating? Stack sats, obviously. The order is for everyone to buy $30 worth of BTC to commemorate this glorious occasion. Will you participate?
Related Reading | The 411 On “Adopting Bitcoin,” A Lightning Network Conference in El Salvador
The intention is not to move the dial or pump the price. The amount is small enough to guarantee that, even if the event goes viral. Which it seems like it’s doing. The movement started humbly, with a Reddit post in the /r/Bitcoin community that asked a simple question.So… We all buying $30 worth of Bitcoin on Tuesday?At the time of writing, the idea has 8.9K upvotes and 2.2K commentaries.
5 BTC + 300 Free Spins for new players & 15 BTC + 35.000 Free Spins every month, only at mBitcasino. Play Now!
Among the comments, some went all-in. “I will buy $3000 tuesday to cover 99 others who arent able to pay.” Others explained away, “Its to show solidarity with our Bitcoin compatriots in El Salvador as they fully adopt Bitcoin as their currency.” And other rightfully criticized, “Sure. Lets just coordinate a 100 mil pump of BTC. Correct me if I’m wrong but this sounds greasy.”
And, sure enough, the idea to back El Salvador’s Bitcoin Law spread to other social networks.
Get 110 USDT Futures Bonus for FREE!
Bitcoin Twitter Will Support El Salvador’s Bitcoin Law
The plebs work fast. As soon as the idea transcended Reddit and got to Bitcoin Twitter, the memes appeared. This piece of art mixes the classic comedy “Trading Places” with El Salvador’s Bitcoin Law, with gold bug Peter Schiff and Bitcoin hater Nouriel Roubini to achieve hilarious effects:
On the 7th of September #Bitcoin becomes legal tender in #ElSalvador.
Plebs and memers unite!! Like, retweet and buy #BTC on the 7th.#7SeptemberBuyBTC@Nayibbukele#LeyBitcoin#Memepool@MoscowMemetards@MemeFactoryTM#Memetards pic.twitter.com/u3rWWGbItr
— Sir William of Orange Pills (@OrangePillWilly) September 5, 2021
Even MicroStrategy’s CEO and notorious Bitcoin enthusiast joined the party. Michael Saylor did his part to support El Salvador’s Bitcoin Law and spread the word to the sizable audience that follows him.
This worries me more than anything. We are at major retracement levels for the price and Michael saylor is getting retail to buy. If the bear market starts this week I wouldn’t be surprised.
— Golde 🔜 EDCLV2021? (@all41and14alll) September 6, 2021
Of course, this raised suspicion. “Everyone needs to be aware that this could possibly be leading the sheep to their death. Very nerve wracking these narratives are coming out before we hit the HUGE retracement levels,” said one commenter. “A hole. Letting retail buy exactly on the 70.2% retracement to dump on them huh,” said another. “If the bear market starts this week I wouldn’t be surprised,” predicted a third one.
Are they on to something or are they missing something? Michael Saylor strongly stated that MicroStrategy is not looking to sell any of their BTC any time soon, but, people have lied before. Do you know what doesn’t lie, though? Bitcoin. If Michael Saylor and company sell on El Salvador’s Bitcoin Law’s day, people will know. The same thing will happen if they buy.
BTC price chart for 06/09/2021 on Oanda | Source: BTC/USD on TradingView.com
The International Community Will Also Buy $30 Worth Of BTC
Here, we can see a Korean bitcoiner translating the order to support El Salvador’s Bitcoin Law and the community from that side of the world responding below.
[6월24일 엘살바도르는 국민 1인당 30$어치 비트코인을 지급하기로 했습니다.]
이것을 기념하기위하여 300만명의 브라질 커뮤니티에서 다같이 30$를 구매하자고 시작한 이벤트입니다.
이것은 엘살바도르의 지원을 의미합니다. #bitcoin#ElSalvador https://t.co/2I9zZkWPRA pic.twitter.com/QD1ntWevRd
— ATOMIC⚡️ BITCOIN (@atomicBTC) September 6, 2021
It’s curious that the translated tweet, one of the first ones in that social network, talks about a Brazilian Bitcoin Community and that they’re doing it “remembering that Sep 7th is Brazil’s independence Day.” As far as we can tell, they link to the same /r/Bitcoin post we identified as the origin and almost all of the posts there are in English.
Related Reading | Michael Saylor Brings The Thunder To Venezuelan Bitcoin-Only Podcast
It’s also curious that the Satoshi Nakamoney character keeps adding up to the story as it progresses, and ends up declaring.“To be clear: massive #bitcoin buy will happen at 3pm of El Salvador time zone.”
Can you think of anything else in the world bringing people together as much as #Bitcoin is right now?Anything even at any time in your life?
Have you ever felt such benevolence to strangers from different nations, religions and other affiliations as you do toward bitcoiners?
— Tomerrrr Strolight – Slayer of Lies (@TomerStrolight) September 6, 2021
Will this collective action pump the price as El Salvador’s Bitcoin Law goes into effect? Maybe the plebs can’t do it by themselves, but what about doing it with Michael Saylor’s help? Another fascinating activity to monitor tomorrow. Legal Tender day is here.
Featured Image: Bitcoin Day Flyer | Charts by TradingView/a>
Economist Nouriel Roubini and former risk analyst Nassim Taleb took aim at crypto at the CoinGeek conference this week, while the always controversial Craig Wright boasted that the BSV blockchain was on track to hit billions of transactions a second.
Taleb, the author of best-selling economic books Black Swan and Skin in the Game, was a controversial addition to the lineup of the CoinGeek Conference in Zurich and came under fire on social media for giving BSV legitimacy.
Roubini meanwhile, offered a “greatest hits” version of his of attacks against crypto, familiar from crypto conferences prior to the pandemic.
“There is no reliability, no regulation, no AML, no KYC. [Crypto] is used by terrorists, money launderers, human traffickers, criminals, tax evaders.”
Taleb is gone. Calvin is going to brainwash him even more thoroughly at the Coingeek conference next week. He will be wined and dined and schmoozed and very soon he will be saying “Craig is Satoshi”.
— Cøbra (@CobraBitcoin) June 6, 2021
Roubini argued that cryptographic tokens — which includes BSV presumably — are unnecessary and should be isolated from the value of the decentralized data verification enabled by blockchain technology.
“Data is very valuable, it’s the new oil,” he explained, lamenting that “99%” of the fintech application “has nothing to do with cryptocurrencies.” What is needed, Roubini explained, is a service that is “reliable, that stores the data, says who owns it and who pays for it.”
Taleb followed Roubini on the panel, agreeing that the data utilities enabled by cryptocurrency should be understood as a separate phenomenon to the cryptographic tokens issued by many blockchain projects. He shared his belief that those who need crypto and those who can use it are not aligned, adding:
“Who needs cryptos? Well, criminals need cryptos, except it doesn’t work for them.”
Related: Bitcoin’s usefulness is on a whole other level, depending on where you live
The host attempted to get the panel back on track asking Taleb if he agrees that “BTC does not represent what the Bitcoin Whitepaper describes.”
In response, Taleb admitted he thinks Bitcoin in its current form does not resemble the whitepaper, but countered that “the currency in the whitepaper may not be what we are looking for.”
NChain’s chief scientist, Craig Wright, talked up BSV, asserting it was “never designed to be a currency, it’s digital cash” and went on to make the claim:
“We will have a billion transactions a second in a few years, and then we will do one trillion a second.”
As you might expect, those Bitcoiners who did tune in were hate watching the broadcast, including YouTuber “BTC Sessions” who shared that they only “hopped on the stream for a second just to give it a thumbs down.”
Wright’s chief critic Arther van Pelt also tuned in to throw stones and tweeted that the panel was receiving very little viewership, calling it a “clown show.”
Hardly 650 viewers on YouTube when Ian Grigg, Craig #Faketoshi Wright, Nouriel Roubini and Nassim Taleb are on stage. ♂️ pic.twitter.com/dtwD8fE93v
1. Tesla caught a lucky break in announcing its $1.5 billion bitcoin purchase when it did. The auto giant is reportedly being investigated by Chinese authorities over safety and quality concerns, news that came to light the same day headlines were dominated by Tesla’s treasury, according to CoinDesk markets reporter Muyao Shen.
Media gadflies, like NYU economics professor Nouriel Roubini, have criticized Tesla and bitcoin. Speaking on CoinDesk TV this morning, “Dr. Doom” raised questions about “market manipulation” – including CEO Elon Musk’s public comments on crypto and that a particular wallet “sucks” – and Tesla’s “failing” business model, which, he says, is now being masked by an asset with “no intrinsic value.”
Still, it’s an open question as to whether other corporations will follow Tesla, Square and MicroStrategy’s lead in chipping into dollar reserves with bitcoin. JPMorgan thinks the strategy is an anomaly, due to the crypto’s volatility, while CNBC screaming head Jim Cramer said it’s “almost irresponsible” to not have the asset on a corporate balance sheet. Twitter is reportedly considering it.
2. Decentralized finance is heating up. Most notably, Amazon’s AWS Marketplace is offering Origin Protocol’s decentralized e-commerce platform Dshop to software-as-a-service customers (SaaS), as part of its partner network.
Never mind bitcoin on the balance sheet, a subsidiary of Europe’s biggest telco is taking a stake in DeFi heavyweight Flow Network, a proof-of-stake blockchain, and becoming a data provider to the Chainlink oracle network. (CoinDesk’s Ian Allison reports out what this might say about the future of enterprise blockchain.)
Meanwhile, a version of Curve Finance’s automated market maker is being built on Polkadot, a proof-of-stake chain that offers an alternative to Ethereum. Separately a piece of digital land sold for a record 888 ETH.
3. A U.S. citizen is suing the Internal Revenue Service, which could have wide implications for all cryptocurrency holders and privacy rights. CoinDesk privacy reporter Ben Powers gives a rundown of James Harper v. Charles P. Rettig, in which the plaintiff argues the IRS had violated Coinbase users’ constitutional rights by sending 10,000 letters warning they may not have paid taxes properly.
The suit centers around how the government requests and comes into possession of personal data, and whether individuals have lost their right to privacy by dealing with “third parties” like Coinbase. In an increasingly web-mediated world, more and more behavior is based on network technologies – meaning, theoretically, more private information may be subpoenaed by the government.
Nigerian citizens are rejecting governmental overreach in banning cryptocurrencies by turning to peer-to-peer exchanges. “Decentralized systems are hard to ban,” one user told CoinDesk contributor Alyssa Hertig.
At stake
Bitcoin ban?
With bitcoin going parabolic and maverick boosters like MicroStrategy CEO Michael Saylor earning ears to the thesis that the dollar is a “melting ice cube,” concerns that the U.S. government could outright ban the cryptocurrency are surfacing.
“If you think the U.S. Treasury and the U.S. government will let this thing get out of hand where literally corporates are starting to replace dollars…” Dan Nathan, founder and principal of Risk Reversal Advisors, said on CNBC yesterday.
Well, as the segment host asked: “What can they do?”
“They can regulate the hell out of it,” the reply went. Indeed, governments across the world are shifting their weight around on crypto. India has floated a ban on “private currencies.” The U.K. recently squashed crypto derivative products and regimes in China and Nigeria have long-standing restrictions on crypto trading.
But whether the U.S. government could interfere with the nascent digital economy is another question. This is the land of the free, after all, and what’s more sovereign than bitcoin? More to the point:
Bitcoin has a $647.2 billion market cap, and much of the infrastructure is being laid down in the U.S. Multi-billion dollar companies like Coinbase are gearing up to go public, while INX is already selling shares on the Ethereum blockchain. Surveys reveal that anywhere from one-tenth to half of the U.S. population owns cryptocurrency.
It’s for these reasons that industry watchers like Wall Street Journal MoneyBeat reporter Paul Vigna think “the ship has sailed” on a full-throttle ban, as he said yesterday afternoon on All About Bitcoin, a new CoinDesk TV show.
This morning on First Mover, Blockchain Association Executive Director Kristin Smith gave a sobering appraisal of the current prospects for crypto regulation: More is coming, but it’s more likely to be informed and beneficial.
Under the Trump administration, regulators like former acting head of the OCC Brian Brooks laid the foundation for “banks and institutions” to grow into their role with cryptocurrencies, Smith argued. This happened despite Brooks’ bosses Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and Donald Trump thinking little of the industry.
“With the Biden administration, we’re going to see a much more thoughtful, measured approach [to crypto policy],” Smith argued. This is a particularly insightful comment considering the 11th hour legislative attempt to limit on-chain privacy with FinCEN’s “unhosted wallet rule.” (More on the status of that here.)
“They [Mnunchin’s admin] had written something that was so crazy, without understanding how these networks work that we were able to threaten to sue based on process,” Smith said.
While she predicts Biden appointees to be more open to civil discussion, Smith notes that regulators that know how the snaking process of rule-making works could be dangerous. “It’s a risk that you run when you have someone who knows what they’re doing… They have the ability to inflict an incredible amount of damage,” she said.
Has the ship sailed? It’s hard to say – but commenters aren’t speaking from the dock, waving their hats in farewell. Everyone, regulators, bulls and reporters are all on deck bracing against turbulent waters. Who knows, maybe Roubini is right, maybe it’s a ship of fools.
Quick bites
On the Bitcoin energy debate: Does a greener world need fewer greenbacks? (Reuters)
Billionaire Tilman Feritta sold cars for bitcoin in 2017 (beating Elon to the punch?) (CNBC)
QuadrigaCX is back from the dead – sorta. An imitator is using the defunct exchange’s URL, likely to scam unsuspecting users or even those spurned by the original, which went down after the mysterious death of its founder. (CoinDesk)
Legacy exchanges are more than pulling their weight in crypto adoption, argues Kaiko’s head of research. (CoinDesk Opinion)
Rumors that WallStreetBets had an early bead on Tesla’s BTC buy were started by a high German politics student. (NY Post)
Intangible qualities like brand and community give Bitcoin and Ethereum an edge in the world of open-source development. (CoinDesk Opinion)
Who won the meme war?
Subscribe to receive Blockchain Bites in your inbox, every weekday.
Dr. Nouriel Roubini, a notorious Bitcoin critic, and economic analyst has yet again cautioned institutions and retailers against investing in the digital currency. He cited the recent drop in the price of the coin and the fact that it is too volatile to be useful as a store of value. However, this statement appears contradictory
Read MoreRead More. The post by Evan Ezquer appeared first on BTCManager, Bitcoin, Blockchain & Cryptocurrency News
Dr. Nouriel Roubini, a notorious Bitcoin critic, and economic analyst has yet again cautioned institutions and retailers against investing in the digital currency. He cited the recent drop in the price of the coin and the fact that it is too volatile to be useful as a store of value. However, this statement appears contradictory