Steve Hanke Really, Really Hates Bitcoin

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Not everyone loves bitcoin. In fact, there are those out there – like Warren Buffett or his sidekick Charlie Munger – that hate it with passion, and now, it looks like top economist Steve Hanke is joining the ranks of BTC’s biggest opposers.

Steve Hanke Isn’t a BTC Fan

In a recent interview, Hanke stated that bitcoin was a “bubble.” He said that it held no intrinsic value, that it was overpriced, and that it wasn’t likely to go anywhere in the future. In other words, those who buy it are stupid and are throwing their money into the trash can. Hanke commented:

Bitcoin is a bubble. It has no inherent value and is terribly overpriced. Buying bitcoin is a fool’s game.

While bitcoin indeed has a strong legion of fans, the world’s number one digital currency by market capitalization has had a hard time of things over the past year or so. In 2022, the asset lost more than 70 percent of its value and wound up taking a huge dip into the mid-$16K range by the end of the year. This was a big change from the new all-time high it achieved in November of 2021 (during that time, the currency hit a price of $68,000 per unit).

In any case, there was a lot of speculation of just how stable bitcoin truly was, as for the past several years, the asset had been touted as a hedge against inflation and all kinds of other things. These narratives were ultimately challenged in ways nobody thought possible given the currency fell so much during times of record inflation (it peaked last June and moved beyond nine percent).

With all this in mind, it seemed like bitcoin and many of its altcoin cousins were losing their mojos, but now that we’ve entered 2023, the currency and its brethren are experiencing rises here and there that have ultimately seen them enter phases of healing. Bitcoin recently hit a price of $30K, and while the currency has dropped down again somewhat since then, the price was a walloping change from where it stood last year.

BTC has been subjected to some rather odd circumstances over the past few weeks given how much the financial space appears to be at war with itself. On the one hand, you have banks falling left and right. Institutions like First Republic, Signature, and Silicon Valley Bank have crashed and burned, thus paving the way for bitcoin’s recovery.

So Many Twists and Turns

At the same time, organizations like the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) have done all they can to bring down major crypto players like Kraken and Coinbase. This, naturally, has been weary for the asset.

Hanke is a former economic advisor to President Ronald Reagan, who served in the 1980s.

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