Bitcoin will likely “totally collapse,” Nobel Prize-winning economist Robert Shiller has told CNBC, adding that it reminds him of “tulip mania” centuries ago in the Netherlands.
The Yale University professor said there are “bubbles everywhere,” not just in bitcoin, and added that he “doesn’t know what to make of bitcoin ultimately.”
“It has no value at all unless there is some common consensus that it has value. Other things like gold would at least have some value if people didn’t see it as an investment,” Shiller told CNBC in an interview ahead of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, where he will be speaking next week.
“It reminds me of the Tulip mania in Holland in the 1640s, and so the question is did that collapse? We still pay for tulips even now and sometimes they get expensive. (Bitcoin) might totally collapse and be forgotten and I think that’s a good likely outcome but it could linger on for a good long time, it could be here in 100 years.”
Eulogy made by Robert Shiller
