Lord Turner’s crypto scepticism is painfully out of touch |
In an interview with City AM, Lord Adair Turner compared buying crypto to buying tulips in 1635. Bepi Pezzulli writes a rebuttal
Lord Adair Turner, technocrat extraordinaire and destroyer of banking excess, has discovered something troubling: people are using computers to transfer value without asking his permission. Worse, they’re doing it efficiently. This cannot stand.
His recent philippic against cryptocurrency – delivered, deliciously, from his perch as chairman of a fintech bank – rests on the claim that digital assets are “pure financial engineering” producing nothing of value. Bitcoin, he insists, is merely “a tulip in 1635”, existing only to facilitate speculation. This would be a compelling argument if it weren’t contradicted by roughly $50bn in daily settlement volume and the stubborn fact that Bitcoin has now survived 15 years, multiple 80 per cent drawdowns and the determined hostility of every major central bank. Tulipomania lasted four months. See the difference?
Lord Turner’s core confusion lies in........