A key member of the Governing Council of the European Central Bank (ECB) has recently slammed cryptocurrencies, calling them a “complete load of nonsense,” according to a Bloomberg report.
Ardo Hansson, who also holds the position of the governor at Estonia’s central bank, made this harsh criticism while speaking at a conference in Riga, Latvia.
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“The bubble has already started to collapse and maybe we should just see how far this collapse goes, and what is left when we’ve reached a new kind of equilibrium,” Hansson said.
Mentioning the fallacy of the digital asset economy, he added: “I think we will come back a few years from now and say how could we ever have gotten into this situation where we believed this kind of a fairy-tale story.”
Hansson further warned authorities to focus on the protection of cryptocurrency investors, stating his concerns about the possible use of cryptocurrencies in illegal activities.
A Long Time Critic
The Estonian central bank governor is a long-time critic of cryptocurrencies. He previously warned about the sector and linked the companies offering cryptocurrency services with a new source of money laundering. Hanson also supported the criticism of the Mario Draghi, president of the European Central Bank, against the issuance of an Estonian national digital currency.
Despite Hansson’s comment, Estonia is one of the most crypto friendly jurisdictions in Europe. In recent years, the country has become the base of many blockchain firms and has extensively adopted the blockchain technology. It has become one of the first countries to keep health records on the blockchain.
According to Bloomberg, Estonian police issued almost 500 licenses to crypto-currency exchange providers in a year, and more than 440 licenses to companies offering a wallet service.
Bubble or Not?
The crypto market attracted the attention of the mainstream in 2017 when the value of Bitcoin, along with other altcoins, skyrocketed. Despite warnings of many established investors and governments, more and more crypto investors poured in to get a piece of the soaring market.
However, after reaching its peak in January 2018, the market started to correct itself with a strong bearish trend – going down from a total capitalization of $828 billion to merely $134 billion as of press time. Many have called this hit a burst of the bubble and even compared it to the infamous ‘dot com’ bubble of the 1990s.
Hansson has joined the ranks of billionaire investor Warren Buffet and JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon in bashing cryptocurrencies.