Cryptocurrencies take not been used as a safe haven among challenges the global economy has faced at the showtime of the year, one skillful says.

The world has already seen a slew of market-shaking events this year including merchandise policy dubiousness, geopolitical tensions and the coronavirus epidemic, amongst others. With investors around the world struggling to find safe haven assets to insure themselves confronting potential crises, it was anticipated that many would plow to Bitcoin (BTC) and other digital currencies.

Doubts of crypto'southward capabilities

Still, some manufacture experts say that digital currencies have failed to serve as a safe oasis. In a recent interview with Cointelegraph, Campbell Harvey, a professor of international business at Duke University, said that people value cryptocurrencies for transactional purposes and speculation.

"When you start talking almost safety oasis, it becomes really difficult to think are these really condom-haven assets because it'south merely not obvious," Harvey said, suggesting that much of the value that is attributed to cryptocurrencies is substantially speculative.

Elaborating further on the matter, Harvey referred to a major sell-off in the stock market when the prices on consecutive days dropped by 3%, adding:

"Now, if these cryptos were safe havens, and then you would wait maybe no change in their value or maybe fifty-fifty an increase in value. But that's definitely not what we've seen. The cryptos got battered and dropped by more than x%. So that suggests to me, in a detail situation of nifty stress where people are realizing that there's systemic risk unfolding, the stock market drops as expected, people flee to safe assets, but they didn't flee to cryptos, they fled to the U.Due south. 10-yr bail."

"We're already in a recession"

Harvey went on to speak near the inverted yield bend, which, according to him, precedes recessions. He suggested that the recession will be very severe, with people de-risking their portfolios by liquidating some of the cryptocurrencies in the face of the electric current coronavirus threat:

"We were already in a slowing growth situation and already headed for what might be a mild recession or just a slowdown. And then given what nosotros've seen in terms of in many cities, many countries where economic activity is basically stopped. So information technology could be that we're already in a recession."