According to Christine Lagarde, cryptocurrency is not money. The “boss of the euro” therefore seems to see absolutely no competition in Bitcoin.
Crypto is not money’
“Crypts are not currency. Period. Cryptos are highly speculative,” the president of the European Central Bank (ECB) told Bloomberg. “They claim to possibly be a currency, but they are not. They are not!”
She goes on to say that she believes we should “distinguish between cryptos that are super speculative, and regularly suspect, and also very high-intensity energy consumption. But they are not currencies.”
On the one hand, the former top woman of the IMF is right: most altcoins are not intended as money, means of payment and currency. As a result, they cannot compete with Bitcoin either. After all, that is the most decentralized, scarce and most popular internet money that is wandering in cyberspace. But Bitcoin itself is indeed a currency. In El Salvador, it is even legal tender, and in countries like Argentina, the adoption rate of bitcoin as a currency and means of payment is huge. It doesn’t matter to Lagarde and her opinion remains the same as at the beginning of this year: “It’s speculative, and it needs rules.”