Roubini predicts a ‘crypto apocalypse’ amid Bitcoin’s plunge under Trump administration

Roubini said Bitcoin behaves like a leveraged bet, rising and falling alongside risky stocks rather than hedging uncertainty.

Economist Nouriel Roubini, known for his anti-crypto rhetoric, predicted an impending “crypto apocalypse.” He explained that the future of money and payments will evolve gradually rather than undergo the revolutionary transformation promised by cryptocurrency proponents.

In a recent post, Roubini said the latest price drop in Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies shows the extreme volatility of what he calls a “pseudo-asset class,” and expressed hope that policymakers recognize the risks before further damage occurs.

He recalled that Donald Trump had returned to the US presidency a year earlier after courting private crypto investors and gaining significant support from crypto industry figures. This led several evangelists to predict that Bitcoin would reach at least $200,000 by the end of 2025 and become “digital gold.”

Roubini: Bitcoin is not a hedge

According to Roubini, Trump has followed through by dismantling most crypto regulations, signing the Guiding and Establishing National Innovation for US Stable Coins (GENIUS) Act, pushing the Digital Asset Market Clarity (CLARITY) Act, profiting from domestic and foreign crypto deals, promoting a meme coin bearing his name, pardoning crypto criminals allegedly linked to terrorist organizations, and hosting private dinners at the White House for crypto insiders.

Roubini noted that crypto was also expected to benefit from macroeconomic and geopolitical risks, including rising sovereign debt levels, fiat currency degradation, trade wars and increased tensions between the US, Iran and China, factors that have coincided with a more than 60% increase in gold values ​​by 2025.

However, Bitcoin fell 6% that year and at the time of writing was down 42% from its October peak and below Trump’s election levels, while the TRUMP and MELANIA meme coins were down 95%. Roubini said Bitcoin repeatedly fell during periods when gold rose, arguing that it behaves like a leveraged risk asset correlated with speculative stocks rather than a hedge.

He reiterated his long-standing view that crypto does not function as a currency, as it is neither a unit of account, a scalable payment system, nor a stable store of value, while citing the experience of El Salvador, where Bitcoin accounts for less than 5% of transactions. He further argued that crypto is not a real asset because it has no revenue streams or real-world utility.

You might also like:

About stablecoins and regulations

Roubini said the only widely accepted crypto application after 17 years is the stablecoin, which he described as a digital form of fiat money already replicated by traditional finance, claiming that most blockchain-based systems are centralized, authorized and privately controlled. He claimed that fully decentralized finance will never scale because governments will not allow anonymous transactions, and that AML and KYC requirements undermine claims of lower costs.

While talking about regulation, Roubini warned that the GENIUS Act risks recreating the instability of 19th-century free banking because stablecoins lack strict banking regulation, access to lenders of last resort or deposit insurance, making them vulnerable to runs. He also criticized proposals that would allow stablecoins to pay interest, claiming this could destabilize fractional reserve banking unless payments and credit creation are structurally separated.

Roubini’s comments come as Bitcoin continues its downward trajectory, falling a new 6% on Thursday and trading below $71,600 at the time of writing. The latest decline has added to broader unease in the market, and analysts are warning that BTC’s continued weakness could have broader implications. Market experts have increasingly expressed concerns that companies holding large BTC reserves could face massive balance sheet stress and systemic risks if prices continue to fall.