According to online reports, Paul Krugman, the 2008 Nobel Prize winner in Economics, said in a blog post that "stablecoins do not have any clearly useful functions" and believed that their only economic reason is to "facilitate criminal activities", such as money laundering and extortion. He compared stablecoin issuers to 19th century "prewar banks", calling them a new type of "shadow banking" that could evade regulation and raise risks similar to the 2008 financial crisis. Coin Metrics co-founder Nic Carter responded on social media, calling Krugman's view of stablecoins "extremely wrong" and pointing out that more than 100 million stablecoins users around the world have proven their practical use. Paul Fusaro, president of Bitwise Asset Management, also supported Carter's views.