Nobel laureate Shiller: Bitcoin is likely to "collapse"

US economist Robert Shiller feels reminded by the Bitcoin hype of the tulip mania of the 17th century. Shiller, who won the Nobel Prize for Economics in 2013 together with Lars Peter Hansen and Eugene Fama, is skeptical about the future of the cryptocurrency.

Shiller told US broadcaster CNBC that Bitcoin has no value at all unless there is a general belief that it has value. Unlike the gold, this has "at least some value, even if it is not considered as an investment ". Shiller added that the Bitcoin reminds him of the Dutch tulip mania of the 1640s. But he sees a difference: "Even today we still pay for tulips," says Shiller. For Bitcoin, on the other hand, there is a high probability that it will "totally collapse and be forgotten". However, it could also be that the cryptocurrency persists for a long time and "is still there in 100 years".

Yale University's pro-market professor also said in the interview that there were "bubbles everywhere", not just in Bitcoin. His book "Irrational Exuberance", published at the height of the dot-com bubble, predicted the then-coming market slump. Even before the real estate bubble in the US, which led to the outbreak of the global financial crisis from 2007, he had warned early.