While the Bitcoin vegetates around $16,000, the European Central Bank has again spoken out on the cryptocurrency. This was an opportunity for her to reiterate her scepticism.
In just over a decade, Bitcoin has created a large cohort of aficionados who have never ceased to praise the merits of the creation of the mysterious Satoshi Nakamoto. But the digital currency also has its share of critics, in particular from the side of the European Central Bank, from where Christine Lagarde has repeatedly tackled the queen cryptocurrency. And new shots have just been fired from Frankfurt by the director of the “Market infrastructure” division Ulrich Bindseil, and the adviser Jürgen Schaaf.
Too polluting, useless for exchanges, simple speculative tool…
A post that just appeared on the ECB blog summarizes the monetary institution’s grievances against Bitcoin (some of which will sound familiar to crypto enthusiasts). In this text whose title, “The last battle of Bitcoin”, directly announces the color, the Central Bank enumerates in a list à la Prévert all the faults it finds in Bitcoin.
It would thus be too polluting, with a mining activity which consumes annually as much as all of Austria. With its slow, cumbersome and expensive transactions, it would still be useless for major legal transactions. Moreover, as it produces neither cash-flown, nor dividends, nor social profit, it would be the illustration of zero investment.
To summarize this mood post (very bad, we can say), Bitcoin would only have two “utilities”. And not the prettiest. One, implicitly expressed by this editorial, would be to serve as currency for illegal activities. The other, hardly more laudable, would be to fuel again and again a cycle of endless speculation.
Blockchain is not a pro-Bitcoin argument
Yes, okay you might say, but Bitcoin is also the best advertisement for the new blockchain technology, considered by some to be revolutionary! But the two authors of the article do not seem to want to hear this argument which they find particularly insufficient.
” The belief that innovation must be given space at all costs persists stubbornly. Thus, since Bitcoin is based on a new technology, DLT/Blockchain, it would have a high transformation potential. First, these technologies have so far created only limited value for society, regardless of expectations for the future. Secondly, the use of a promising technology is not a sufficient condition to prove the added value of a product based on it. »
In short, we will have understood it, for these two executives of the ECB, Bitcoin is no. We are therefore not surprised that they are advocating for much more draconian regulation, in relation to the risk profile of cryptocurrency which would be much higher.
Source : ECB
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