IMF Floats the Idea of Banning Cryptocurrencies
Jose Nino
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IMF managing director Kristalina Georgieva recently floated the idea of banning cryptocurrencies. Georgieva claims that this option should be on the table if these digital currencies start to pose greater risks to financial stability.
“We are very much in favor of regulating the world of digital money,” stated Georgieva during an interview with Bloomberg. She added that regulating digital currencies is one of the main priorities of the Financial Stability Board (FSB), the IMF, and the Bank for International Settlements.
In the case that the regulation is “slow to come and crypto assets become a higher risk for consumers and potentially for financial stability,” the option of prohibiting cryptocurrencies “should not be taken off the table,” said Georgieva.
If there’s heightened predictability and consumer protection in effect, such bans will not be needed, per Georgieva. However, she said “we are not yet in this world.”
In 2022, the IMF declared that regulations imposed on cryptocurrencies “should not be seen as stifling innovation but rather as building trust.”
Georgieva also argued that “there’s still a lot of confusion” regarding digital currencies. She stressed that the IMF’s “first objective is to differentiate between central bank digital currencies that are backed by the state and publicly-issued crypto assets and stablecoins.”
She contended that state-backed stablecoins have “reliability” and “reasonably good space for the economy.” By contrast, she argued that private crypto assets “are speculative, high risk investment, and not money.”
At a recent G-20 meeting in India, the organization’s finance ministers and central bank governors published a paper calling for the creation of global regulation standards for cryptocurrencies.
Alluding to the document, Georgieva proclaimed that “crypto assets cannot be legal tender because they don’t have the definition of money.”
Cryptocurrencies, regardless of their flaws, genuinely represent one of the last mechanisms to secure freedom in an increasingly unfree world. Unsurprisingly, the IMF — an institution that promotes technocratic tyranny — wants to hamstring this sector as much as possible.
Cryptocurrencies, and other forms of competing money, are one of the last mechanisms to disintermediate the managerial state and bring back some semblance of economic freedom in this Clown World we live in.
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