The President of the European Central Bank, Christine Lagarde, in a recent interview with Dutch television show College Tour has rehashed her previous criticism of cryptocurrencies saying that they are worth nothing, according to a Politico report.
According to Lagarde, crypto assets are highly speculative and remain very risky investment vehicles citing the example of her son whose investment in the space has not been totally successful.
The ECB’s president statement is not totally surprising considering that she had previously criticized the industry. The statement is also coming at a time when the crypto market is undergoing one of its worst downturns led by the capitulation of the Terra ecosystem.
The crash was discussed by the finance ministers and central bank governors of the G7 countries who met between the 19th and 20th of May, 2022. The meeting led to an increased call for the regulation of the overall crypto ecosystem to avoid huge losses of this kind.
ECB President Says She can Guarantee Digital Euro
The ECB president might not be a fan of cryptocurrency but she has thrown her weight behind a central bank digital currency project for the European continent, the digital euro.
Lagarde said that a digital euro would be different from cryptocurrency because a central bank is going to be behind it, so she can “guarantee it.”
In her words,
The day when we have the central bank digital currency, any digital euro, I will guarantee it. So the central bank will be behind it. I think that is vastly different from any of those things.
The ECB is reportedly planning to launch the digital euro by 2026. This was confirmed by a member of its executive board, Fabio Panetta, in one of his recent speeches where he stated that the project would potentially be designed to carry out person-to-person payments.