[2017-11-16] ECB's Nowotny says central banks considering cryptocurr. regulation

[Terraformer]

FLORENCE, Italy (Reuters) - European Central Bank governing council member Ewald Nowotny said on Thursday that legislators and central bankers are discussing whether they should intervene to regulate cryptocurrencies, as China already has done.

“We’re asking ourselves if legislators or central banks should intervene, as happened in China where they banned (the use of cryptocurrencies) because they consider them fraudulent,” Bank of Austria’s Nowotny said at a conference in Florence.

Chinese authorities in September ordered Beijing-based cryptocurrency exchanges to stop trading, in a move aimed at limiting financial risks surrounding the highly speculative market that has grown rapidly this year.

However, Nowotny played down the possible risks cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin represent for the wider financial system.

“This market is not so large, so it cannot create financial instability,” he said, adding that investors needed to understand the product.

“It is like buying shares on the bourse ... people investing in this product can suffer losses and if that happens, they simply have to accept it,” he said.

Underscoring the volatility in the market, Bitcoin lost almost a third of its value in less than four days last week, but has staged a strong recovery this week.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-ecb-bitcoin-nowotny/ecbs-nowotny-says-central-banks-considering-cryptocurrency-regulation-idUSKBN1DG2NX?il=0

[buwaytress]

There's definitely something brewing on the horizon for the EU, and as with all the past moves on financial regulation, this has started with somewhat low-key informal discussions with industry leaders. This is what happened a month ago in Brussels when some EU ministers and the ECB met behind closed doors with a coupld of blockchain firms and even a Chinese miner. Central theme to the meeting? Cryptocurrency regulation.

The blueprint's already there to be honest. Meanwhile Finma in Switzerland's almost in the final phases up its first investigation into ICOs. 2018's going to be a very revealing year for European governments and central banks.

[Cajulasa]

There's definitely something brewing on the horizon for the EU, and as with all the past moves on financial regulation, this has started with somewhat low-key informal discussions with industry leaders. This is what happened a month ago in Brussels when some EU ministers and the ECB met behind closed doors with a coupld of blockchain firms and even a Chinese miner. Central theme to the meeting? Cryptocurrency regulation.

The blueprint's already there to be honest. Meanwhile Finma in Switzerland's almost in the final phases up its first investigation into ICOs. 2018's going to be a very revealing year for European governments and central banks.

If EU can legalize bitcoin like the Japan, that is good boost for BTC.

[jekjekman]

We can't blame authorities if they are alarmed on what is happening on the price of the coin, it is really alarming that it's price dropped to $5,000 last week before recovering back to $7,000. Bitcoin's price can easily be manipulated by few people if they want to and that is why authorities wants to do something about it since it is the interest of their citizens that they are protecting. More and more people are being aware of bitcoin's existence and they are avoiding these people to loose their fortune afterwards.

[darkangel11]

“It is like buying shares on the bourse ... people investing in this product can suffer losses and if that happens, they simply have to accept it,” he said.

But it's their choice! Why aren't you trying to stop them from investing in startups, why aren't you advising against crowdfunding? Bitcoin is not a scam, we can all agree on this, so whatever happens we the investors are all pushing the same boulder. It's our choice and we are ready to face the consequences.

Underscoring the volatility in the market, Bitcoin lost almost a third of its value in less than four days last week, but has staged a strong recovery this week.

It's an overstatement. It fell from 7,5k to 5,5k USD, so it lost 2000USD so it was closer to 1/4 than 1/3 and that top that got cut off is always the most unstable part.

[Carlton Banks]

Bitcoin's price can easily be manipulated by few people if they want to and that is why authorities wants to do something about it since it is the interest of their citizens that they are protecting.

That's not a very good a idea.

People got into Bitcoin to begin with because they don't want "the authorities" to "protect" them. People from Venezuela to Greece have experienced this inept "protection" in only the past 5 years. No-one wants to be "protected" from actually owning their money, and from that money actually being in scarce supply.


People like the ECB (and you personally, it seems) don't get it yet. They are not the authorities any more. Bitcoin is a new authority, and there's nothing that can be done about that, Satoshi designed Bitcoin too well.

[hv_]

Bitcoin on-chain cannot taken down by regulators, but LN and 2nd Layers by high chance could.

That's why on-chain scaling is way more secure and important than off-chain technobubbles.

[pixie85]

It's impossible to completely regulate cryptos. The only thing you can regulate are exchanges and for that matter only those that exchange cryptos to fiat. Crypto - crypto exchanges are basically untouchable since in the EU it's legal to trade game currencies and tokens, like virtual gold, items, skins. It's going to be extremely hard for them to regulate crypto exchanges and not touch other virtual goods.

[veleten]

There's definitely something brewing on the horizon for the EU, and as with all the past moves on financial regulation, this has started with somewhat low-key informal discussions with industry leaders. This is what happened a month ago in Brussels when some EU ministers and the ECB met behind closed doors with a coupld of blockchain firms and even a Chinese miner. Central theme to the meeting? Cryptocurrency regulation.

The blueprint's already there to be honest. Meanwhile Finma in Switzerland's almost in the final phases up its first investigation into ICOs. 2018's going to be a very revealing year for European governments and central banks.

If EU can legalize bitcoin like the Japan, that is good boost for BTC.

EU can't legalise bitcoin,it is too divided at the moment
they can't make decisions on the more pressing matters,like immigrants,for example
each and every country is trying to get some sort of a deal to get rid of as many as they can
some countries like Poland have mass protests against immigrants
so how do you expect EU to be unanimous on such a sensitive matter as finances and regulating bitcoins
hell some of the EU countries have their own currencies still (Sweden,Denmark,UK),I see no legalisation of bitcoins in EU
maybe in a couple of EU countries,yes but not EU as a whole