Steve Hanke, a professor of applied economics at Johns Hopkins University, has warned that El Salvador’s recent adoption of Bitcoin (BTC) as legal tender has the potential to “completely collapse the economy.”
Steve Hanke served as a senior economist under President Ronald Reagan administration from 1981 to 1982. Hanke has previously described BTC as a speculative asset “with a fundamental value of zero,” and in April the 78-year-old tweeted “cryptocurrencies are the future of money. Bitcoin is not.”
Speaking with streaming financial news provider Kitco News on June 15, the university professor noted that BTC hodlers from regions such as Russia and China could now target El Salvador to cash out their holdings — essentially draining the country of its U.S. dollars: