Ardo Hansson, the governing council member at the European Central Bank (ECB), has predicted that digital currencies will probably die because they’re a “complete load of nonsense.”
Estonia’s Central Bank Governor: “Crypto Bubble Already Starting To Collapse”
Hansson noted:
The [cryptocurrency] bubble has already started to collapse and maybe we should just see how far this collapse goes, and what is left when we’ve reached a new kind of equilibrium.
Hansson, who’s currently the governor of Estonia’s central bank, also remarked: “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 former chief economist at the World Bank warned that regulatory authorities should be focusing on investor protection issues, stating “if grandmothers start investing in that,” then there could potentially be serious problems. Similar to the concerns expressed by other traditional financial market professionals, Hansson pointed out that cryptocurrencies could be used to finance illicit activities.
Estonia’s Regulators Have Issued Over 900 Crypto-Related Licenses
According to the ECB policy maker, financial stability issues may arise if those who carry out illegal activities using digital currencies also begin to exploit the larger traditional financial sector.
Estonia’s financial watchdog has said that they view firms providing crypto-related services as a potential risk to the nation’s economy because they can be used for money laundering purposes.
As CryptoGlobe reported in November 2018, regulators in Estonia have issued over 900 crypto-related licenses in the past year. Approximately 500 of these licenses were given to local digital currency exchanges and about 440 licenses were issued to crypto wallet service providers.
Cryptocurrencies Are An “Evil Spawn” Of The 2008 Financial Crisis
Notably, Hansson is not the only ECB official who has expressed negative views regarding cryptoassets. As covered, Benoit Coeure, an executive board member at the ECB, had revealed (in mid-November 2018) that he thinks digital currencies like bitcoin (BTC) are the “evil spawn” of the 2008 financial crisis.
Although Coeure acknowledged that bitcoin was an “extremely clever idea,” he pointed out that not “every clever idea is a good idea.” Coeure’s comments came during a conference held at the Bank for International Settlements in Basel. He also remarked:
Few remember that Satoshi embedded the genesis block with a Times headline from January 2009 about U.K. banks’ bailout. In more ways than one, Bitcoin is the evil spawn of the financial crisis.
