Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman on Monday took aim at major players in the cryptocurrency industry who are angling to get President-elect Donald Trump to help them fatten up their bank accounts.
Writing on his Substack page, Krugman hammered crypto advocates' demands that the government guarantee their rights to open accounts with any bank operating in the United States.
"Now we have crypto boosters demanding that the evil government force the evil banks to let them have conventional checking accounts," he argued. "What’s going on here?
"Elon Musk, Marc Andreesen and others claim that there’s a deep state conspiracy to undermine crypto, because of course they do. But the real reason banks don’t want to be financially connected to crypto is that they believe, with good reason, that to the extent that cryptocurrencies are used for anything besides speculation, much of that activity is criminal — and they don’t want to be accused of acting as accessories."
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Krugman then went through the history of cryptocurrency before arguing that it has primarily shown itself to be a conduit for illicit and illegal transactions that can require opacity so as not to be tracked by law enforcement agencies.
"The use of crypto for money laundering appears to be rising rapidly," he wrote. "And if I were running a bank, I’d be reluctant to host a bank account belonging to someone who might be involved in unsavory activities."
Turning back to Trump's big tech investors, Krugman wrote that what they "are demanding could be seen as a call for the U.S. government to intervene to make life easier for criminals."