Bitcoin ought to be outlawed, says Joseph Stiglitz

Joseph E. Stiglitz, Nobel Prize for Economics and Professor, School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA), Columbia University, has condemned Bitcoin as “successful only because of its potential for circumvention [and] lack of oversight,” and has called for it to be banned.

In a Bloomberg Television interview, he said the cryptocurrency doesn’t serve “any socially useful function” and he believes that Bitcoin is a bubble that will give “a lot of people a lot of exciting times as it rides up and then goes down.”

Bitcoin’s rapid increase in value has led many analysts – including Stiglitz and fellow Nobel Prize laureate, Robert Shiller – to suggest Bitcoin’s rise is unsustainable and a price collapse is almost inevitable.

The value of one Bitcoin went past $10,000 for the first time this week – continuing the huge rises seen since the beginning of 2017. At the start of the year, it was worth just $998.