….as do, market regulators, I’d add. Bloomberg reports:
Central bankers generally agree with one another that privately issued cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin and Ethereum aren’t set to replace traditional currencies. This consensus was well-summarized in the recent IMF “Global Financial Stability Report,” which noted how cryptocurrencies are still far from fulfilling the three textbook functions of money. “While they may serve as a store of value, their use as a medium of exchange has been limited and their elevated volatility has prevented them from becoming a reliable unit of account,” IMF researchers wrote.
But the central banker consensus breaks down when it comes to how to regulate cryptocurrences. In a new paper for the Hutchins Center on Fiscal and Monetary Policy at the Brookings Institution, Eswar Prasad, a professor of economics at Cornell University, has offered an extensive list of the many ways in which regulators have approached the Bitcoin question. This ranges from the United States, where the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) has taken a more laissez-faire approach by classifying cryptocurrencies as commodities, to China, where the People’s Bank of China has banned all cryptocurrency trading.
The full story is here.