Lubin said that there are tens of thousands of available decentralized transactions per second on Ethereum right now.

By the end of the year, Lubin expects this figure to hit “hundreds of thousands” and that the industry is still very early in its infancy similar to the early years of the internet.

Lubin also noted that Ethereum could give users more control of their personal identities and data. "Decentralized identity allows us to control information like our financial and health information rather than having other institutions custody that information."

He argued that the shift toward decentralized systems would allow users to focus more on using this data to improve their health than having companies utilize them for other purposes, such as marketing or selling products and services.

The Impact on Monetary Policy

The conversation soon turned to the trend of governments launching cryptocurrencies and whether central banks need to have a monopoly on monetary policy.

Roubini argued there is a paradox on stablecoins – that central banks are debasing their currencies yet every day new stablecoins are linked to fiat currencies like the U.S. dollar.

The NYU professor also raised concerns about decentralized stablecoins like Tether that are not truly backed by fiat currencies. He predicted that more stablecoins would collapse in the future.

On the monetary policy side, Roubini noted that we operated in a world with a fractional reserve system where banks create deposits. In a hypothetical world where the Federal Reserve or the European Central Bank, he believed they could be a useful tool for governments.

“If and when central bank create currencies, they will not be based on decentralization. And they will be superior to bank deposits, digital payment systems like Venmo, and dominating other cryptocurrencies.”

On the effectiveness of cryptocurrencies and monetary policy, Roubini said that cryptocurrencies created by central banks would create more stability because the banks can go beyond the zero bound requirements and go more negative with interest rates in the event of severe economic events.