Crypto survivors could become the next ‘Amazons and eBays’: Bank of England talks up crypto
Coinhead
Coinhead
It seems not everyone’s Googling ‘Bitcoin is dead‘… The Bank of England’s deputy governor Jon Cunliffe, for instance, said some pretty positive things about the crypto industry this week.
A major central banker talking up crypto during a time of hefty reputational damage to the industry with over-leveraged players potentially going under? Is this a joke? Nope.
Cunliffe was speaking during the Point Zero Forum in Zurich midweek, as reported by both Bloomberg and Decrypt, and compared the current crypto market crash to the early days of the internet – an oft-referenced tale of boom, bust and phoenixes rising from ashes.
This line of thinking from the BoE is interesting to compare with its assessment on crypto around this time last year, when its governor Andrew Bailey said “the evidence does not point to it [crypto] being a large part of the picture”. Although he did acknowledge it’s a fast-changing landscape.
And while we’re so used to hearing prominent central bankers throw shade on crypto (including Bailey) perhaps it shouldn’t come as a complete surprise that the Bank of England has at least begun to provide some decent balance in its discourse and assessment of the industry.
After all, it was only a couple of months ago that the British government outlined a detailed plan to make the nation “a hospitable place” for the digital-asset class and turn the UK into “a global cryptoasset technology hub”.
Sir Jon Cunliffe with the Bank of England is one of the most thoughtful and studied central bankers looking at responsible financial services innovation. His assessment about the survival of the #crypto and #fintech fittest is not wrong. https://t.co/e5eZusuqGR
— Dante Disparte (@ddisparte) June 23, 2022
The British government and Bank of England have both indicated that the nation intends to bring stablecoins within the regulatory framework as soon as possible. In fact, in April, the government’s Treasury announced that it is now validating stablecoins as an accepted form of payment. For his part, though, Bailey has in the past indicated a preference for regulating stablecoins in the same manner as traditional fiat systems.