Nassim Taleb
Nassim Taleb, a past hedge fund manager and financial trader, was once a believer in crypto, particularly bitcoin. In 2021, he about-faced, and tore the most popular crypto currency apart by statistically analyzing the volatility of digital currencies. All in all, he said bitcoin failed in its promise to be a “currency without government (it proved to not even be a currency at all)” and that it did not represent any safe investment for anyone.
The heel-turn was a surprise from a man who wrote forwards for pro-bitcoin books preaching that digital currencies were the future. Things started to change. He sold his bitcoin and announced on Twitter “a currency is never supposed to be more volatile than what you buy & sell with it. You can’t price goods in BTC.” He started calling out proponents of bitcoin for effectively spreading fraud while ignoring the massive market fluctuations in the crypto sphere. He stopped endorsing his past friend’s book, which resulted in a very painful and very public falling out.
And his crosshairs are no longer just on bitcoin. He recently called the Terra blockchain experiment an “open ponzi” and called for its creator Do Kwon to be put behind bars. His biggest refrain in response to claims that bitcoin is going up, is that in finance, all that matters is “drawdowns,” AKA the decline of a price’s peak to its lowest trough, which help measure overall risk.
