Neel Kashkari, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, offered a blunt take on digital assets, arguing that cryptocurrencies, including bitcoin and stablecoins, have yet to prove real utility.
Speaking at the 2026 Midwest Economic Outlook Summit in Fargo, North Dakota on Thursday, he contrasted the everyday utility of artificial intelligence (AI) tools with cryptocurrencies.
“Crypto has been around for more than a decade, and it’s utterly useless,” he said, while AI “has real long term potential for the U.S. economy.”
After asking the audience who had used AI tools like ChatGPT or Gemini in the past week, Kashkari posed a second question: “raise your hand if you’ve bought or sold something with bitcoin.”
When the…
