Yale’s Shiller Warns Crypto May Be Another Cincinnati Time Store

Cryptocurrencies could be the latest case of more than a century’s worth of failed efforts to revolutionize money, according to Robert Shiller, famed for his warnings about the dot-com and housing bubbles.

The Nobel Prize-winning economist compared the euphoria toward almost 2,000 cryptocurrencies created since 2009 to the rise of “time money” in the 1800s.

In 1827, Josiah Warner opened the Cincinnati Time Store, which sold products in hours of work called “labor notes.” Two years later, the Welsh textile manufacturer Robert Owen attempted to establish the National Equitable Labour Exchange in London based on “time money.” Both experiments failed, ...