I admire people who think they know it all. People that care to think for us, do the research for us, and then just pass their great results to us. Mastodont brains, using their good education and intelligence to do good for humanity. Then the rest of us can just focus on our families, our banks, our gadgets, whatever we like. They'll take care of us. Nouriel Roubini, Professor of Economics at the Stern School of Business at New York University, is one such good-doer. He saw it all before, the scams, the bubbles, the rot, the stupidity, the criminality, and he is willing to save us, if we will listen, by sharing his knowledge of this illegal nonsense called blockchain with us. And with the US Senate too, which he did at a hearing, "Exploring the Cryptocurrency and Blockchain Ecosystem".

"Crypto-land is an eco-system of con artists, self-serving peddlers, scammers, carnival barkers, charlatans, and outright criminals."

He knows. Everything is shady. He knows. Everything is run by cartels and scammers. He read up, and he is pissed. In a caring economist, expert kind of way, of course. Not an "invested" way. He knows everything about Bitcoin, Ethereum, Ripple, he knows that those who buy before a bubble bursts will lose money, he knows about whales and hacked exchanges and price manipulation. He does not seem to know BCNext, or the Ardor platform. He "knows" that a PoS platform does not even exist yet (because Vitalik Buterin hasn't created it?), but if it did it would be a disaster, and hey - what do I know... such a platform hasn't hit the headlines or the "real" academics yet, I see that, so that's what I know.

Well, it's funny. Even though Roubini is talking about blockchains, cryptocurrencies and ICO's, his analysis seems so "last year". Like he is describing the past, even though much of it is still actual. All these problems, all his fears, they are real but they have been addressed, the technical solutions are already found, programmed, being released.

Is this an illustration of the problem of regulating in a fast-paced world?

We create. Then we use. They realize. Then they analyze. We create. They are still trying to understand the MVP, when version 2 is released. But it isn't creators, nor firstmovers, nor the real users but academics, running after the wagon if they even realize there is one, that are called in as "experts". How in the world can anyone make decisions based on that? We have a long way to go.

Where is Ardor in this analysis? It's not to be found on CMC Top 10, so it's invisible. It can't be found in the library of notorious financial crypto scams or scandals, so... it's not there. You can not find the killer app that is based on Ardor, because the platform is a killer itself. Stateless contracts. Pruning of data. PoS. The JPL. Child chain creation is still governed by Jelurida but will become open for everyone in time. Jelurida has decided not to let scammers overflow Ardor with child chains, they say, but instead start with trustworthy businesses, like Dominium. After reading this article I understand why and agree with them. Look at the mess he makes, the conclusions he draws.

"...a bunch of self-serving greedy white men – very few women or minorities are allowed in the blockchain space – have pretended to create billions of wealth out of nowhere while pretending to care about billions of poor and unbanked human around the world."

If I had, as an outsider (like the Senate), and not as a Nxter since 2013, read this 37 pages long rant against blockchain, Roubini might have convinced by his "analysis". But knowing what I know, I've rather come to see Nouriel Roubini as a proud, arrogant, and probably good-hearted man, who unfortunately does not have the any idea about what's going on outside of the limelight, or the slightest faith in the talent, intellect or well-willingness of the real blockchain developers. He likes to convince us that he has understood it all, and probably thinks so too, but we are already aware of the current problems and working past them.

Lior commented on his speech in this Medium article:

Roubini is Right - Reflecting on Nouriel Roubini’s cryptocurrency testimony at the senate on 12 October 2018

"As an entrepreneur in public blockchain networks, my first reaction to this inaccurate and misleading testimony was to dismiss it as yet another horse carriage manufacturer speaking about steam cars, as a turbo propeller engine specialist referring to jet engines, as an MS-DOS user talking about Windows 1.0, or as a Nokia executive reviewing the first iPhone."

"He is ignoring the vast potential of blockchain technology to disrupt other industries such as voting, identity, legal proofs, supply chain, land registries, real estate, and so on. From this narrow, financial sector point of view, one has to agree with some of the claims he makes.

Let’s discuss his points

...

Consensus | Scaling | Cloning | Security | Market Manipulation

Source

Yeah, I admire people who think they know it all. They must live an easy life, but with a lot of enemies. Another approach, one that I admit to admire even more, is to keep an open mind, be willing to acknowledge that someone else might be smarter than you and even able to solve the questions you couldn't. There's some groundbreaking development going on, and not by scam artists but real blockchain developers.

/apenzl

(Back to the Index)