Crypto skeptic Nouriel Roubini is dipping his toe into the market, but he still says 90% of digital assets are useless
BIZINSIDER ·
Nouriel Roubini has been a vocal critic of cryptocurrencies, warning as recently as February of a "coming crypto apocalypse." Still, he's dipping his toe into the world of digital assets. The famed economist, who's been known as "Dr. Doom" over the years for his bearish outlook on the economy and markets, is launching what he calls a stablecoin alternative — a token backed by his ETF, the Atlas Americas Fund (USAF). The digital asset recently received approval in the United Arab Emirates, and will become available in the coming weeks. The token offers exposure to the Atlas Americas Fund, which holds things like short-term Treasurys, gold, shares of real-estate investment trusts, agricultural commodities, and defense stocks. Roubini told Business Insider that the goal of the fund is to provide protection from long-term inflationary trends. So, why the token offering? Why not just buy shares of the ETF? Roubini and Atlas CEO Reza Bundy see stablecoins, which are tied to the value of a fiat currency like the dollar, as an increasingly important means of transacting. That thesis is partly fueled by rising geopolitical tensions and a trend of countries moving away from the US dollar as a reserve currency. Stablecoins are already a large market, with a $309 billion market capitalization. But since stablecoins are pegged to fiat money, they are similarly exposed to inflation, and Roubini and Reza see their token as a place that people — or their AI agents — can park their money while they're not putting it to work. Since it's backed by the income-producing assets in the fund, the token should hold its value over time. The fund's performance has been strong so far; since launching in November 2024, it's up about 9% and yields an annual dividend of 2.45%. "Stablecoins have the same problem as fiat currency. If inflation is higher and you don't pay interest on it, you have a wiping out of the real value of those assets when you have higher inflation," Roubini said. "So you need something that's interest-bearing, that is dollar-based." He added: "When you do a transaction, you may do them with stablecoins, but then you have to switch from the stablecoin into a reserve asset that provides you income." Despite Roubini's new project, he remains a crypto skeptic, even with regards to the apex token, bitcoin. "90% plus of what is crypto is really junk. It remains junk," he said. He said that referring to them as currencies is a "joke," and that they are not a stable store of value nor a scalable means of payment. And while Roubini didn't want to make a prediction for where bitcoin's price is headed exactly, he said it should continue to slide. The digital asset has had a rough 12 months, down 45% since last July. "I'm not going to make any predictions, but I think there are structural reasons, including what's happening right now with Michael Saylor's Strategy, where Bitcoin is going to go down rather than going up," he said, referencing Saylor's recent selling of the cryptocurrency, an event that stoked fresh volatility in the digital asset in recent months. Asked whether any part of his outlook on the crypto space has changed amid his token launch, Roubini drew the distinction between crypto coins and other projects built on a blockchain. "I've always been of the belief that the underlying technology could be useful if it's done right," he said.
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