<
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/nov/30/ecb-says-bitcoin-is-on-road-to-irrelevance-amid-crypto-collapse>
"The European Central Bank says bitcoin is on an “artificially induced last
gasp before the road to irrelevance”, in a scathing intervention arguing
against giving regulatory legitimacy to the cryptocurrency.
In a strongly worded blogpost, senior European Central Bank (ECB) staffers
Ulrich Bindseil and Jürgen Schaaf criticised bitcoin for being a hotbed of
illegal transactions that brings reputational risk for any bank that gets
involved with the sector.
The value of the digital currency has plummeted from a peak of almost $70,000,
stabilising at about $20,000, but has fallen to a low of $16,000 since the
collapse of the crypto exchange FTX. But the ECB authors say even this
stabilisation is likely to be false, an artefact of market manipulation rather
than genuine demand.
“Big bitcoin investors have the strongest incentives to keep the euphoria
going,” they wrote. “The manipulations by individual exchanges or stablecoin
providers etc. during the first waves are well documented, but less so the
stabilising factors after the supposed bursting of the bubble in spring.”
In the article, which was first published as an opinion piece in the German
newspaper
Handelsblatt, Bindseil and Schaaf argue that the speculative bubble
in bitcoin value led to an explosion in lobbying from the cryptocurrency sector
that aimed to treat crypto as “just another asset class”. In fact, they write,
“the risks of crypto assets are undisputed among regulators”.
“Since bitcoin appears to be neither suitable as a payment system nor as a form
of investment, it should be treated as neither in regulatory terms and thus
should not be legitimised,” the blogpost concludes."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
