Greek finance minister Yanis Varoufakis has hit back at criticism resulting from his appraisal of Bitcoin in a blog post last month, calling Bitcoin “too deflationary to work” while continuing to support its underlying technology. In yet another post on the topic of cryptocurrency, Varoufakis writes that those skeptical of his views on Bitcoin “reveal a powerful tendency to underestimate the ill-effects of deflation on a social economy.” He upholds his dislike of “Gold Standard-like” monetary systems, specifically the Eurozone, and controversially draws comparisons between the design of Bitcoin and the Euro. He writes: “[A]lmost paradoxically, the technology of Bitcoin, …

It was almost a year ago – MtGox had just collapsed and Newsweek pointed to Dorian Nakamoto as Bitcoin's creator – that Andreas Antonopoulos come onto the Australian radio show Late Night Live to debate Bitcoin with a professor of economic theory at the University of Athens. The professor’s name: Yanis Varoufakis. Varoufakis, of course, was recently catapulted into the epicenter of world affairs as he was appointed the Minister of Finance of the newly elected Greek government. Determined to restructure Greece's debts, he has been on a collision course with the rest of the Eurozone ever since, and has …

The Finance Minister of Greece’s new radical left-wing government, while at the center of anti-austerity financial policy, is in no way optimistic about Bitcoin, it has emerged. In an article on his website blog from April 2013, Yanis Varoufakis discusses the “impossibility” of a decentralized currency being controlled “apolitically,” and describes this as a “dangerous fantasy.” He stated: “[T]here can be no de-politicized currency capable of ‘powering’ an advanced, industrial society.” Varoufakis has inherited Europe’s worst-performing economy, and will seek to end the austerity measures put in place by the previous Greek government following the 2008 financial crisis. Greece’s economy …