European Central Bank ‘Expects’ Crypto Regulation

The European Central Bank (ECB) says it “expects” cryptocurrency regulation to be high on the agenda at the G20 Summit in Buenos Aires this March.

In comments at an event during the ongoing World Economic Forum 2018 in Davos, ECB board member Benoit Coeure added further weight to France’s economy minister Brune Le Maire’s vow to make Bitcoin a topic at the political forum.

“The international community is... preparing an answer to that and I would expect, for instance, the G20 discussion in Buenos Aires in March to focus very much on these issues,” Coeure said quoted by Reuters.

Le Maire had previously expressed a desire to have Bitcoin regulation feature on the G20 agenda, with various entities repeating calls for an international regulatory effort on cryptocurrency during the WEF.

British prime minister Theresa May and US Treasury secretary steven Mnuchin both expressed the need to consolidate standpoints, while former US Secretary of State John Kerry told Cointelegraph the technology “had value” and that people were thus going to talk about it.

Elsewhere in Europe, Sweden’s deputy central bank governor has stopped short of calling for heightened control of cryptocurrencies, saying at the WEF they “don’t meet the criteria to be called money.”

“They can be called an asset, fine, but they are not a very good version of money because it's not a very stable store of value where they fluctuate a lot,” she continued adopting a frequent narrative on Bitcoin’s use. “And it's not a very efficient medium of exchange because you don't buy your groceries with bitcoin.”