TL;DR: Go-to US progressive economist and Nobel Laureate Paul Krugman recently crowdsourced an email message he received. Characterizing it as “weird,” apparently it referenced some kind of payment sent his “blockchain wallet,” one he admitted he didn’t have. His revelations were seized upon by Bitcoiners as yet another example of Krugman’s notorious and ironic lack of financial awareness.

Paul Krugman Confused About “Blockchain Wallet” he Doesn’t Have

“OK, this is extremely weird,” Krugman posted. “I received an email saying that a payment has been received into my blockchain wallet. But I don’t have a blockchain wallet. Presumably there’s some kind of fraud going on, but what?” Any other 66 year old would be politely excused for the stunning ignorance of a financial technology more than a decade old.

OK, this is extremely weird. I received an email saying that a payment has been received into my blockchain wallet. But I don't have a blockchain wallet. Presumably there's some kind of fraud going on, but what? — Paul Krugman (@paulkrugman) December 5, 2019

Paul Krugman, of course, is not your average Boomer. The American economist is graduate professor at the City University of New York, longtime columnist for The New York Times, and a Nobel Prize winner for his work in trade theory. He’s also penned nearly 30 books, including textbooks, hundreds of scholarly articles for refereed, peer-reviewed journals, and is considered a favorite living economist among academics. He’s had the ears of US presidents, world leaders, and prime ministers.

That he’s yet to master the basics of a burgeoning financial technology revolution such as Bitcoin is revealing, but also very much in line with the famous Keynesian’s notable gaffs. Back in 1998, for example, Red Herring asked him and others to predict trends for the then-coming new century. “The growth of the Internet will slow drastically,” Krugman wrote confidently, “as the flaw in ‘Metcalfe’s law’ — which states that the number of potential connections in a network is proportional to the square of the number of participants — becomes apparent: most people have nothing to say to each other! By 2005 or so, it will become clear that the Internet’s impact on the economy has been no greater than the fax machine’s.”

Vitalik Helps, Vinny Offers $5,000

Over the years, Krugman grappled openly with conceptual aspects of Bitcoin, vacillating between considering it “evil” to later being a “cryptic skeptic.” Whatever his objections, it’s patently clear his real-world knowledge of the subject leaves a lot to be desired, especially if a rather overt spam email throws him into confusion intense enough to seek help on social media.

Ok boomer — Conner Brown (@_ConnerBrown_) December 5, 2019

Bitcoiners immediately pounced on Krugman, calling him out for once again proving he’s unafraid to let knowledge of a subject get in the way of pontification. Not everyone gave him a thrashing, however. Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin seemed genuinely concerned, hoping to clear up Krugman’s troubles. “Can you screenshot?” Buterin asked. “Regardless, from the info you gave my first guess is it’s one of these services that lets people send coins to your email address which automatically creates an account on your behalf that you can access. It could also be a scam site; there’s plenty of those. If you start dabbling in crypto I’d recommend installing metamask, alongside the wallet functionality it automatically blocks all the crypto scam sites that it knows about.”

Vinny Lingham took the opportunity to network market his own project. “I’ll send you $5,000 in Bitcoin,” Lingham urged of Krugman, “if you want to beta test the new upcoming

@civickey wallet. Securely tied to your identity, so you don’t have to remember any seed phrases or wallet security! In other words, it’s a crypto wallet for non-crypto people…”

CONTINUE THE SPICE and check out our piping hot VIDEOS. Our podcast, The CoinSpice Podcast, has amazing guests. Follow CoinSpice on Twitter. Join our Telegram feed to make sure you never miss a post. Drop some BCH at the merch shop — we’ve got some spicy shirts for men and women. Don’t forget to help spread the word about CoinSpice on social media.

DYOR: CoinSpice is your home for just spicy crypto things. We’re not affiliated with any cryptocurrency project or token. Each published piece is intended for information purposes only, not investment advice and not in the hope of impacting speculative markets. There are plenty of trading sites and coin-specific advocacy journals out there, we’re neither. CoinSpice strives for rigorous accuracy in our reporting. Information presented here is contingent usually on a host of factors, and the ecosystem moves fast — prices change, projects change, and at warp speed. Do your own research.

DISCLOSURE: The author holds cryptocurrency as part of his financial portfolio, including BCH.