European Central Bank councillor dubs crypto “a complete load of rubbish”

Member of the ECB’s governing council throws the kitchen sink at bitcoin et al.

A member at the European Central Bank (ECB), has predicted that digital currencies will probably die because they’re a “complete load of nonsense.”

Ardo Hansson, who also serves as Governer of Esti Pank, Estonia’s Central Bank – as you may perhaps expect – has held nothing back in his scathing words on the future of decentralised currencies.

“The bubble has already started to collapse,” he is reported as telling a conference in Riga, Latvia, before adding that “maybe we should just see how far this collapse goes, and what is left when we’ve reached a new kind of equilibrium.”

He continued his critique of the crypto boom by saying “I think we will come back a few years from now and say how could we ever have gotten into this situation where we believed this kind of a fairy-tale story.” His comments came during a conference held in Riga, Latvia’s capital city.

The economist, who previously held the top position in the field at the World Bank, also told the assembled crowd that regulatory authorities should be focusing on investor protection issues. There could be serious issues, he warned, “If grandmothers start investing in that.”

According to our colleagues at CryptoGlobe, somewhat ironically, his native country has issued more than 900 licenses to cryptocurrency firms in the year prior to November 2018, with over 500 given out to local digital currency exchanges. Only this week, we reported on the launch of the DX.Exchange, a company based in the country (and Israel) that – in partnership with Nasdaq – will be launching the first EU-regulated Ethereum-based tokenised stocks with the full support of the Estonian Financial Intelligence Unit and the ability to operate anywhere in the EU, and further afield.

Hansson is having none of it, however, and has now joined other ECB voices in knocking cryptocurrencies. CryptoGlobe also reports that Benoit Coeure, an executive board member with the Bank, recently described bitcoin and its ilk as the “evil spawn” of the 2008 financial crisis.