[2017-12-23] Belgium Central Bank Governor: Bitcoin is Not a Threat Because Its

[BitcoinArsenal]

Earlier this week, the National Bank of Belgium governor Jan Smets said in an interview that bitcoin is not a threat to central banks because it is not stable.

“It’s not stable like the euro,” said Smets, adding “creating blockchain-based digital cash could diminish our limitation to drop interest rates below zero.”

Read Article on CNN

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[richardsNY]

It's quite interesting to see how different the general opinion is regarding Bitcoin. It's actually in our benefit that things are like this. If all countries were on the same thinking level, they could do quite some damage to everything crypto related. I am still of believe that if they combined efforts years ago to ban Bitcoin, while at that point the average person was still thinking Bitcoin is shady, governments could have prevented Bitcoin from growing till where it stands right now. Regulating makes Bitcoin more accessible to all sorts of economical entities, and thus increase its demand significantly, basically like how things are right now. Without regulations, there will be no institutions taking part in this market.

[secondgarlic]

I can respect that opinion, and I think to a certain extent what Mr. Smets is saying is true as well. A currency which can swing as wildly as it has in the past few days will never be able to compete with $ and €.

[darkangel11]

Not stable like the EUR Good joke. It's apples and oranges, but it's actually good for BTC that a banker and an educated and experienced one is comparing a fiat currency that's being used by a huge part of EU's 500 million citizens to a novelty cryptocurrency. I'd like to point out that, as we all know, bitcoin is not recognized as currency in many parts of the world, has no issuer, no banks, not much actual use, and is just 7 years old!
It's like he was saying, that child is smaller, younger, lighter, less experienced than me! It's not a threat, I could beat it up! Just wow...

[cynical]

its interesting how the world is sitting up and taking more notice of bitcoin over the last couple of weeks.
do we in crypto world really care what bankers, government officials and others say about bitcoin?
Remember we are working with a decentralised and unregulated currency system, something the goes against everything they use.

[J. Cooper]

First of all you should define stable. So since the euro is considered 'stable' by Smets I'm assuming 'stable' implies regulated to the core and vulnerable to inflation. In that sense bitcoin isn't stable. Bitcoin's price can be volatile at times but that's solely due to the space being very young while fiat currencies have a marketcap from here to mars. With that out of the wys here's why bitcoin could be a threat. In all the years bitcoin has been around no one has been capable to hack the fundamental code resulting in a strong sense of trust by the users. Something banks lack. The recession of 2008 demonstrated that ever so clearly.

[aso118]

Earlier this week, the National Bank of Belgium governor Jan Smets said in an interview that bitcoin is not a threat to central banks because it is not stable.

“It’s not stable like the euro,” said Smets, adding “creating blockchain-based digital cash could diminish our limitation to drop interest rates below zero.”

Read Article on CNN

I am surprised that central banks are still parroting the same line of last year. Bitcoin might have been small and insignificant when it was worth few hundreds of dollars. Now that its price touched $20k, most governments have begun to notice it. Jan Smets seems to be in a small minority who would like to ignore it.

[BitcoinArsenal]

Not stable like the EUR Good joke.

Well actually he is not completely wrong, short term. The Euro (by the way I do not like it either) is more stable and less volatile as Bitcoin. If you look long term than Bitcoin is much more stable in value. Euro lost value from 1.6 to 1.05 compared to the USD from 2008 to 2016, whereas Bitcoin got from 0 to $1000 in this timeframe.

[Marry Finch]

It seems that the governor of the National Bank of Belgium, Jan Smets, because of instability bikoyuna simply does not take it seriously and therefore stated that he does not consider it a threat to the country's economy. An original opinion.