Normally, there is very limited room for drawing legitimate comparisons between a Senate hearing and an Mixed Martial Arts (MMA) fight. Yet the hearing entitled “Exploring the Cryptocurrency and Blockchain Ecosystem,” which took place on October 11, 2018 on the US Senate’s Committee on Banking, Housing & Urban Affairs’ floor, definitely bore quite a few similarities to a hyped sporting event that had made big waves just a few days ago. Two witnesses who were brought to testify on issues and promises of crypto stood by polarising views on the subject matter, albeit they expressed these views with varying intensity.
On the pro-crypto side, there was Peter Van Valkenburgh, Director of Research at Coin Center, a reserved yet very articulate speaker. In the opposite corner, there was Nouriel Roubini. Roubini or “Dr. Doom”, whose reputation is mainly founded on the prediction of the 2008 housing bubble crash, would be the fighter who does trash talking. In the buildup to the hearing, he fired a long series of vehement tweets, bashing blockchain and its supporters, picking local fights and bragging about having debated best crypto gurus and “beating them by a wide margin”.