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Top economist Nouriel Roubini slammed crypto and some of its major players, saying it’s an “ecosystem that is totally corrupt.”

On a panel hosted by CNBC’s Dan Murphy at the Abu Dhabi Finance Week on Wednesday, the New York University professor said there were “seven Cs of crypto”: “Concealed, corrupt, crooks, criminals, con men, carnival barkers,” and finally, Binance Chief Executive Changpeng Zhao, known as CZ, who spoke on a prior panel at the same conference.

“The lesson of the last few weeks is these people should be out of here,” Roubini added. CNBC has contacted Binance and Changpeng Zhao for comment.

Recent turbulence in the crypto market has seen the downfall of one of the world’s largest crypto exchanges, FTX, with the revelation of highly risky and unsustainable borrowing and lending by the firm and related investment funds.

The price of bitcoin has slumped below $17,000 for the first time since 2020, and some fear the contagion could spread to weigh down on other major companies, such as Crypto.com, although the CEO of the crypto company has denied the claims.

“I can’t believe that CZ and Binance have a license to operate in the UAE. He’s banned in the U.K., he’s under investigation by U.S. Justice Department for money laundering,” said Roubini, who was nicknamed “Dr. Doom” for his prior ominous forecasts, including a prediction of the property market crash in 2007-2008.

Before Roubini’s comments in Abu Dhabi, CZ said on a separate panel he had seen “very significant interest” in assistance for his proposal to set up a recovery fund to support crypto projects facing a liquidity crunch.

Discussing his biggest mistake, he said: “Originally I would’ve said we could’ve moved a bit faster but given what happened last week that might not have been a great idea. Doing things step by step is actually more important.”

In response to a question on whether crypto needed saving, he said: “Crypto has actually shown extreme resilience ... I think the industry will be fine.”