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The Ethereum co-founder and the economics professor disagree about crypto.

On Wednesday, October 10, economist Nouriel Roubini, who teaches at New York University's Stern School of Business, angrily tweeted to Vitalik Buterin criticizing him for the delay in Ethereum's proof-of-stake (PoS) development, as well as about what Roubini sees as the impossibility of any blockchain project being scalable, secure, and decentralized at the same time.

Baited, Buterin defended himself but kept civil:

Again, Roubini attacked:

Buterin, of course, maintained his argument but remained equanimous[1].

What followed was a wash of generally inflammatory remarks[2] about cryptocurrency by Roubini. He asserted that the space features "one shitcoin traded for another shitcoin" and "a cesspool of lunatics with severe Freudian scatological obsessions."

Since then, Roubini has disseminated his anti-cryptocurrency sentiment throughout his Twitter feed[3]. Along the way, prominent voices in the cryptospace have involved themselves in the discourse, including lead Ethereum Name Service developer Nick Johnson, Cornell researcher Phil Daian, and Unchained host Laura Shin, among others.

According to the discussion, Roubini had misinterpreted[4], or misrepresented, Buterin's proposed trilemma. Buterin has discussed the difficulty of creating a blockchain that is scalable, secure, and decentralized all at the same time; often, one characteristic is sacrificed in service of the other two. Roubini argues that it is not just difficult but impossible.

Daian sympathized with (though did not necessarily agree with) Roubini, as the researcher maintains that an interlocutor must engage the opponent's framework[5] (in this case, that of economics) to win an argument. Johnson clapped back and said the point of the argument was not "flipping" Roubini to Buterin's side but rather recognizing the falsehoods about blockchain technology that Roubini had apparently spread. Johnson added:

Roubini eventually joined

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