TL;DR Breakdown
- Sweden’s central bank governor calls for the regulation of cryptos.
- What other regulators are saying on cryptos
Central Bank of Sweden’s governor Stefan Ingves has said that the rising popularity of Bitcoin would only lead to more regulations for virtual currencies.
The continuous growth and popularity of the coin and mainstream adoption reportedly put international monetary authorities on their toes.
The governor of Riksbank said that digital assets’ rising popularity raises the stakes for regulators, central bankers, and lawmakers worldwide.
“When something gets big enough, things like consumer interests and money laundering come into play. So there’s good reason to believe that [regulation] will happen,” he said this week.
He said this, highlighting that money laundering may be the biggest problem regulators would have to tackle when crypto adoption becomes a thing. Stefan pointed to the need for cross-border coordination between regulators worldwide.
What regulators are saying about Bitcoin
Before Stefan’s comments that the rising popularity of Bitcoin would bring about regulation, regulators have been speaking on how they will tame the uprising in the finance world (crypto).
In the United States, Federal Reserve Vice Chairman of Supervision Randal Quarles raised his concerns that current regulatory provisions for crypto are inadequate. He highlighted that the feds should look into how best to tackle the issue.
He said this amid a week of wild volatility in the cryptocurrency markets, with Bitcoin (BTC) temporarily shedding a steep $15,000 in value in one fell swoop.
Similarly, in Sweden, Åsa Lindhagen, the minister for financial markets, has said that the government is already engaged in strengthening regulatory standards for cryptocurrency exchanges. She said that various crypto regulatory approaches remain a “work in progress at the international level.”
Meanwhile, the European Union has pledged to “put in place a comprehensive framework enabling the uptake of distributed ledger technology (DLT) and crypto-assets in the financial sector” by 2024 — one that will, equally, tackle the risks involved in these technologies’ mainstream uptake.
