'Dr. Doom' Nouriel Roubini Says El Salvador Doesn't Need Bitcoin In FTX To Be Bankrupt: Bukele, Bankman-Fried 'Can Share A Crappy Jail Cell'

Prominent economist Nouriel Roubini has said Nayib Bukele, the President of El Salvador, has bankrupted his country despite better advice from the International Monetary Fund and other organizations and that he should be in jail for the rest of his life.

“El Salvador is bankrupt regardless of whether it had any Bitcoin in FTX. With BTC at these levels they are INSOLVENT. So that criminal Bukele should be in jail for the rest of his life regardless of. He has bankrupted his country in spite of the better advice or IMF & all others,” he tweeted.

Roubini’s comments come in the backdrop of the abrupt crash of Sam Bankman-Fried's FTX crypto exchange and the subsequent tumbling in values of Bitcoin BTC/USD and Ethereum ETH/USD.

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Context: Bukele denied that his country's Bitcoin holdings were in FTX, according to Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao who said he exchanged messages with the president. Billionaire tech investor Mike Novogratz sparked the rumors in a TV interview and later apologized to Bukele for falling for "fake news."

Man, the amount of misinformation is insane.

I exchanged messages with President Nayib a few moments ago. He said "we don’t have any Bitcoin in FTX and we never had any business with them. Thank God!" https://t.co/CrM5wd24Ha

— CZ 🔶 Binance (@cz_binance) November 10, 2022

Apologies to @nayibbukele and the people of El Salvador. I fell for ‘fake news’ and while I mentioned I hadn’t confirmed it, I should have.

Thanks @cz_binance for pointing it out.

I am a huge fan of what you are doing in El Salvador.

— Mike Novogratz (@novogratz) November 10, 2022

BTC Mania: El Salvador, a central American country of 6.5 million people, became the first country in the world to accept Bitcoin as a legal tender over a year ago.

Its central bank had purchased nearly $425 million worth of Bitcoin, which was then worth $47,000, and Bukele also proclaimed he would build an international hub for Bitcoin investors. 

“This is the end of the lunatic experiment with Bitcoin in El Salvador! Bukele should be indicted for bankrupting his country, and spend the rest of his life in a dungeon full of shitcoins rather than blaming it all on SBF. Maybe the two of them can share a crappy jail cell!” Roubini tweeted.

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