Ethereum Co-Founder Battles 'Dr Doom' Roubini to Crypto Debate Draw

Nouriel Roubini was in full attack mode in his latest crypto debate.

Alleging various miners, exchanges and cryptocurrencies have cultish followings, Roubini argued against the idea cryptocurrencies are decentralized, positing that these groups tend to have significant sway over the development direction a protocol takes.

Lubin tried to even concede to Roubini on some of his smaller points.

Each time Lubin described progress, Roubini dismissed it out of hand.

Roubini said "Cryptocurrency" was a misnomer because it's not really money.

Still, surprisingly, if the winner were measured by who got the most big laughs or big rounds of applause, it would go to Roubini.

"You're going into a world of 'The Flintstones' or barter," Roubini said.

Again and again Roubini argued that ethereum itself should start policing scams and kicking them off the platform now, not addressing how that would run fundamentally counter to the censorship resistance ideology engineered into these platforms.

So even if Lubin did win the debate, it seems clear he could never win over Roubini.

Roubini v. Lubin photo by Brady Dale for CoinDesk.