Bitcoin Is ‘Anything but Useful’ Says Ex-Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen

Bitcoin is “anything but” a useful store of value, former U.S. Federal Reserve chair Janet Yellen stated in a speech Monday, Canadian financial news outlet Kitco reported Oct. 29.

Speaking during an interview at the 2018 Canada FinTech Forum in Montreal, Yellen – who rose to fame in the cryptocurrency community last year as the target of the now infamous ‘Buy Bitcoin’ session at a House Financial Services Committee meeting – doubled down on her previous criticism of the asset.

“It has long been thought that for something to be a useful currency, it needs to be a stable source of value, and bitcoin is anything but,” she claimed, continuing:

“It’s not used for a lot of transactions, it’s not a stable source of value, and it’s not an efficient means of processing payments. It’s very slow in handling payments. It has difficulty because of its very decentralized nature.”

Having been present during Yellen’s speech, Satoshi Portal CEO Francis Pouliot was among the first to denounce her words on social media, describing them as “The Official NPC [non-player character] guidelines to Bitcoin FUD, courtesy of the FED.”

At a press conference in December of last year, Yellen similarly called Bitcoin a “highly speculative asset” and “not a stable source of value." She also noted that the Fed was not “seriously considering” the concept of a state-issued digital currency at that time.  

Yellen’s speech Monday echos not only her own previous comments on crypto, but also those made earlier this month by economist Nouriel Roubini, an outspoken cryptocurrency naysayer who foresees the entire ecosystem failing.

Commentators have taken Roubini to task over his comments, arguing his lack of understanding of decentralized cryptocurrency has led him, like Yellen, to draw false conclusions about its resilience.

“I can see a bubble when there is one – and to me, this entire space has been the mother and the father of all financial bubbles and now it’s [going to] burst,” he told Cointelegraph during an appearance at BlockShow Americas in August.