This economist contradicts himself several times. He alternately says cryptocurrencies are and are not a real currency. He also says economists aren't really qualified to analyze the space, which is interesting because he starts off by saying his role as a monetary theorist makes him uniquely qualified to do just that.
> I think of crypto not so much as a currency. You can’t really use it to buy a coffee at Starbucks.They’ve been failing as that kind of currency. I think of them as new kinds of computers, new kinds of legal systems, and new ways of achieving reliable decentralized consensus. So I think they’re most analogous to advances in computing rather than some kind of monetary event.<p>This is a point I like to make about Crypto. Unless your country's money is terrible, cryptocurrency is a terrible alternative.<p>It's better to think of the blockchain as an incredibly efficient title transfer technology. If you've ever bought a house, transferring the title is a fairly laborious and expensive process. Crypto makes that process so cheap we're using it on much dumber things. But that doesn't mean the technology itself is a dead end.
"I think of them as new kinds of computers, new kinds of legal systems, and new ways of achieving reliable decentralized consensus. So I think they’re most analogous to advances in computing rather than some kind of monetary event."