'Walking time bomb', 'worse than SBF': Nouriel Roubini slams Binance CEO CZ

'Walking time bomb', 'worse than SBF': Nouriel Roubini slams Binance CEO CZ

By Senad Karaahmetovic

Nouriel Roubini, renowned Professor of Economics and CEO of Roubini Macro Associates, launched a scathing attack on Changpeng ‘CZ’ Zhao, CEO of the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange Binance.

Roubini said he “can’t believe” that Binance is allowed to operate in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and called CZ a “walking time bomb” who “should be kicked out of this country and not allowed to operate.”

Roubini also said that CZ is “going to get worse than Samuel Bankman-Fried,” the CEO of the embattled cryptocurrency exchange FTX. He later accused CZ on Twitter of having “no more credibility than SBF!”

Roubini was speaking at the ADGM event in Abu Dhabi, part of the Abu Dhabi Finance Week. Changpeng Zhao and Mike Novogratz, founder and CEO of Galaxy Digital, were keynote speakers at the same event and were on stage just minutes before Roubini was invited to share his thoughts on “the way forward for the modern digital assets era.”

“This is an ecosystem that is totally corrupt,” he said on stage.

Just after the session was finished, Roubini launched a series of tweets about the crypto market, saying that crypto is 7 C’s: “1. Concealed, 2. Corrupt, 3. Crooks, 4. Criminals, 5. Con men, 6. Carnival barkers, 7. @cz_binance.”

“Me calling for @cz_binance to be kicked out of the UAE while I was live on stage today at the ADGM Crypto day. That shady character was speaking right before me together with Lunatic @novogratz both of them vomiting their crappy bullshit about collapsing shitcoins. Rats & Roaches,” Roubini said in a tweet.

“So is @binance Pump & Dump Central & @cz_binance its Ringmaster? For 5 years they have allowed every sleazy activity to occur on their shady platform including massive money laundering ($8bn from Iran), pump & dump schemes & much else. & their shitcoin BNB is as vaporware as FTT,” Roubini added in another tweet.