Eisman of 'Big Short' Fame Doesn't Believe Cryptocurrencies Have Value

One of the principal characters of the “The Big Short,” Steve Eisman said today, when asked about cryptocurrencies, “I don’t see the purpose of it.” The Wall Street Journal reports  Eisman told the CFA conference in New York, “What value does cryptocurrency actually add? No one’s been able to answer that question for me.”

Eisman is a no nonsense guy, who was played by Steve Carell in the movie based on Michael Lewis’s book. Lewis paints a vivid picture of Eisman, which I mention in my review for mises.org.  

And when the pugnacious ex-lawyer turned fund manager Steve Eisman and his skeptical accounting guru, Vinny Daniel, took the train down to see a woman at S&P who was in charge of monitoring subprime bonds, thinking that she surely had information they didn't, they were stunned — because she didn't. "This was insane: The arbiter of the value of the bonds lacked access to relevant information about the bonds."

Lewis goes on to relate how Eisman tore into the woman from S&P for not having more information than he did — not unusual for a man who studied the Talmud as a young man in order to find mistakes, and when he became a rich man, donated to an organization called Footsteps, "devoted to helping Hasidic Jews flee their religion. He couldn't even give away his money without picking a fight," Lewis writes.

Eisman has stayed completely away from cryptocurrencies and is instead focused on the Canadian housing market which is beginning to crumble.

Eisman joins Warren Buffet in dissing cryptos in recent days. The Oracle of Omaha had harsher words for digital currencies, calling them, “probably rat poison squared’ and predicted cryptocurrencies “almost certainly...will come to a bad ending.”

Meanwhile Bitcoin’s Chief Economist Jeffrey Tucker disagrees, saying cryptocurrencies “provide a new form of human association.”

If price is the arbiter of this debate, Tucker is currently winning, with Bitcoin selling for $8,752.21.