The lecture was presented by Professor Yanis Varoufakis at the University of California, Berkeley, on 11/7/2014
Yanis Varoufakis is a Greek economist. Varoufakis was a member of the Parliament of Greece between January and September 2015. He represented the ruling Syriza party and held the position of Minister of Finance for seven months. He voted against the terms of the third bailout package for Greece. In February 2016, Varoufakis launched the Democracy in Europe Movement 2025 (DiEM25)
Varoufakis enrolled in the economics course at the University of Essex, United Kingdom, in 1978. After a few weeks of lectures, he switched his degree to mathematics. Varoufakis moved to the University of Birmingham in October 1981, obtaining a MSc in mathematical statistics in October 1982. He completed his PhD in economics back at the University of Essex in 1987. Between 1982 and 1988, Varoufakis taught economics and econometrics at the University of Essex and the University of East Anglia. In 1988, he spent a year as a lecturer at the University of Cambridge. From 1989 to 2000, he taught as senior lecturer in economics at the Department of Economics of the University of Sydney with short stints at the University of Glasgow and the Université catholique de Louvain and also acquired Australian citizenship. In 2000, Varoufakis returned to Greece where he was unanimously elected an associate professor of economic theory at the University of Athens. In 2002, Varoufakis established The University of Athens Doctoral Program in Economics (UADPhilEcon), which he directed until 2008. In 2005 he was promoted to full professor of economic theory. Beginning in March 2012, Varoufakis became Economist-in-Residence at Valve Corporation, researching the virtual economy on the Steam digital delivery platform. From January 2013, he taught at the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas, Austin, as a visiting professor. In November 2013, he was appointed guest professor at Stockholm University, Department of Computer and Systems Sciences, to work within game and decision theory at the eGovLab. On 22 January 2015, the International University College of Turin awarded to Varoufakis a Honorary Professorship in Comparative Law Economics and Finance for his extraordinary theoretical contribution to the understanding of the global economic crisis.
Books by Varoufakis in English include “Game Theory: A critical introduction”, “Foundations of Economics: A beginner’s companion”, “Economic Indeterminacy: A personal encounter with the economists’ most peculiar nemesis”, and “The Global Minotaur: America, the True Origins of the Financial Crisis and the Future of the World Economy”
I really value Yanis opinion on money as he is very smart and rhetorically brilliant.
However, I disagree about bitcoin. Bitcoin is a technological breakthrough, not a “Ponzi scheme”. Bitcoin is something real with the blockchain technology underlining it, it is like digital commodity.
It takes electricity to produce, and it is backed by the services it provides. It is secure, convenient, decentralized, nearly anonymous peer to peer transactions. The market capitalization of Bitcoin is currently around $46.68 billion Dollar (July 2017). |
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