Bitcoin basher Nouriel "Dr. Doom" Roubini brands $13b DeFi industry "vaporware"

Due to a confluence of trends, including but not limited to a search for yield on cash and a recovery in the price of Bitcoin, DeFi coins have gone from a market capitalization of a billion or two to $13 billion as per CryptoSlate data.

According to data from DeFi Pulse, the value of cryptocurrencies locked in decentralized finance applications such as MakerDAO and Compound has reached $11 billion after crossing $1 billion for the first time earlier this year.

Nouriel "Dr. Doom" Roubini recently dubbed DeFi a space full of "Vaporware," agreeing with Bitcoin maximalists for once.

Nouriel Roubini trashes DeFi space despite extreme growth.

"DeFi was vaporware from its onset. Now totally faltering as blockchain was always the most over-hyped technology in human history."

While Roubini sees DeFi as a space full of vaporwave, there is serious capital and investors entering the space.

"DeFi is a new stack of financial services - think lending, derivatives, insurance, trading, crowdfunding, and more - built on top of blockchains that embraces the core values of the open internet DeFi opens the components of finance to the same recombination and experimentation that makes open-source software so powerful."

Spencer Noon, the head of DTC Capital, said that institutional investors he is in contact with are interested in DeFi.

"My read on #DeFi after speaking with instl investors, fund mgrs, OTC desks, and FOs over the last few wks: The herd is coming. They're excited about DeFi but new to it, so they're buying $ETH first."

They're excited about DeFi but new to it, so they're buying $ETH first.