European Central Bank Standing Still For Cryptocurrency Regulation

The European Central Bank (also known as ECB) has changed its stance regarding cryptocurrency regulation. They described cryptocurrencies as “not exactly very high thing on our to-do list” in a brief interview with CNBC.

Daniele Nouy, who is the ECB Chair of the Supervisory Board spoke in the interview. She said that she has “no clue” whether a regulatory move is coming. However, she believes that the involvement of ECB-regulated banks in the sphere was “very, very low”.

As Nouy stated, “We scrutinize the issue in a regulatory perspective, we are ready to do something if it was needed, but so far it’s not exactly very high on our to-do list,”

Her comments are coming ahead of the anticipated G20 Summit that will take place this March in Argentina. Cryptocurrency regulation is believed to be a hot topic on the summit and a potential one for discussion, according to many sources.

Another board member, Benoit Coeure, has shown his stance on the entire situation last month. As he said, he “expected” the international community to focus on the regulation issue at the upcoming event.

However, Europe’s umbrella bureaucracy seems less interested in direct intervention on its own. As the ECB President Mario Draghi told the European Parliament in Strasbourg last Monday, ““We are not observing a systematically relevant holding of digital currencies by supervised institutions. Actually, credit institutions… are showing limited appetite for digital currencies, like Bitcoin.”