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A professor at Cornell University’s Dyson School, Eswar Prasad, has raised concerns about the increasing risks in the cryptocurrency market, pointing to regulatory gaps and centralization as key issues. “If anything, crypto today presents even greater risks to its investors and to our financial institutions than it did before,” he said.
Cornell Professor’s Crypto Warning
Eswar Prasad, a professor at Cornell University’s Dyson School and senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, voiced significant concerns about the risks posed by the burgeoning cryptocurrency market in an opinion piece published by The New York Times on Friday.
Despite bitcoin’s recent surge to record highs and increasing political support from figures like former U.S. President Donald Trump and current Vice President Kamala Harris, Prasad warned:
If anything, crypto today presents even greater risks to its investors and to our financial institutions than it did before.
He noted that the loosening of regulations by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has made it easier for retail investors to enter the crypto market, often without fully understanding the risks involved.
Prasad further highlighted the dangers of centralization within the crypto ecosystem, pointing to the collapse of FTX and legal troubles surrounding Binance as examples of how centralized power can undermine the foundational principles of decentralized finance. He also emphasized that “risks could spill over from decentralized finance to traditional finance, as well as the other way around,” creating vulnerabilities across the broader financial system.
The Cornell professor argued that while decentralized finance has the potential to improve financial access and efficiency, it has also “imported the fragilities of traditional finance, but with much less regulation and with many new risks.” He advised:
While being open to innovations that improve access to and efficiency in financial markets, users, investors and regulators ought to beware of false promises and hype. Especially if that hype comes from politicians.
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