Bitcoin is a Tumor, The Black Swan Author Declares

“You’re creating bubbles, creating tumors like bitcoin,” the author of “The Black Swan,” Nassim Nicholas Taleb said about monetary policy
The Federal Reserve continues to push interest rates lower, aiming to combat inflation

A once Bitcoin fan the Lebanese American statistician, risk management guru, and author of the Black swan, Nassim Nicholas Taleb thinks Bitcoin is not doing us any good economically. He states during an interview that it is time to go back to a normal economic life without any digital currencies involved.

The Black Swan is a standalone book in Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s landmark Incerto series, an investigation of opacity, luck, uncertainty, probability, human error, risk, and decision-making in a world we don’t understand.

During an interview, he stated that the federal government had lowered the interest rates way below “sea level”. The Federal Reserve held the fed funds target rate at a range of 0% to 0.25% between 2008 and 2015. As if it made the situation better ultra-low rates were put in place during the global financial crisis.

We’ve had 15 years, 14 and a half years of Disneyland that basically has destroyed the economic structure. Think about it. No interest rates.

Said Taleb.

Policymakers are expected to deliver the fifth rate hike in 2022 in order to combat inflation. This will continue to make borrowing money more expensive. Nassim defines the situation as a “Disneyland economy”. The fact that Bitcoin is still trading at the $20,000 level means that there are still some things that need to be corrected.

A year ago Nassim Taleb owned cryptocurrencies. Last year in April he told Lebanese citizens that they should try maneuvering around cryptocurrencies (Bitcoin) and get around the country’s financial system. A few months later Nassim complained about, Coinbase’s customer care support on Twitter and then closed his Coinbase account.

Coinbase failed to reply to Nassim on time after he reached out to them about an issue he had with the account. Coinbase replied to him on his Twitter account and said they would follow up on the issue but it wasn’t quick enough.

“Too late. Closing account,”

By last year in February, Nassim officially declared Bitcoin a failure. These are more of his personal opinions and shouldn’t become an influence on people’s choice whether or not to invest in cryptocurrencies. He still rallied on, sold his Bitcoin, and said that Bitcoin is just a Ponzi scheme.

This isn’t the first time that Nasim Taleb has been sensitive about Bitcoin. He once compared Bitcoin to a contagious disease, an obsolete product of low-interest rates.

Basically experience in finance with a discount rate near zero is like having studied physics except without gravity. https://t.co/8sVKH8Z0rq

— Nassim Nicholas Taleb (@nntaleb) September 15, 2022

According to the Lebanese author, the U.S. has been sitting on zero interest rates and it is hurting the nation’s economy.

Bitcoin, I call it a tumor. Real estate is another tumor. People have this notion that markets should behave the way they think they should behave. When you look at markets they swing from overvaluing to undervaluing.

Nassim Taleb