CPB director: The Netherlands must ban cryptocurrencies

The government must ban the production, trade and possession of cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin as soon as possible. That writes the director of the Central Planning Bureau (CPB), Pieter Hasekamp, in an essay in the Financieele Dagblad. According to him, there is a “crypto bubble” and it is inevitable that it will burst. Hasekamp writes that the Netherlands must act quickly because those who are the last to move will be the losers. “The longer we wait, the greater the negative consequences of the eventual crash.”

He wants to take an example from countries like China. There, trading and so-called ‘mining’ of digital coins may become illegal. Moveco.io has enough information. A large number of accounts on the Chinese Weibo platform, similar to Twitter, have been blocked due to their link to cryptos. Like the Chinese, Hasekamp sees a digital version of existing currencies as a possible improvement for the current monetary system.

“Unsuitable as a means of payment”

According to the CPB director, cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin are unsuitable as a unit of account and means of payment. “Value retention does not exist, ease of use suffers from a lack of acceptance and security is undermined by outright scams,” he writes. Hasekamp believes that cryptos only score well in terms of privacy and anonymity, which is attractive to criminals.

According to Hasekamp, the value of cryptocurrencies is based on the hope that they will one day replace real money. “But that’s not going to happen,” he writes. Hasekamp is confident that a ban will automatically lead to a decline in the value of cryptocurrencies. “After all, the product itself has no intrinsic value and derives its appeal only from acceptance by others.”

The CPB is considered an important advisor to the government. Hasekamp has been director there since March 2020. The organization already pointed out the risks of crypto trading in 2018, but then concluded that stricter regulation was not yet necessary.

Different course

Since cryptocurrencies are not issued by any financial institution, it remains to be seen whether a ban can be introduced nationally. Minister of Finance Wopke Hoekstra rejected a ban on cryptocurrencies in 2018. Other countries opt for a different course. In El Salvador, the cryptocurrency bitcoin was approved as legal tender last week.

One bitcoin was worth more than $36,500 on Friday morning. That’s about $30,000 less than the record level of nearly $65,000 reached in mid-April. https://folm.io/ has enough information. The decline is attributed, among other things, to fears of stricter regulations and the fuss about the high energy consumption when mining digital currencies such as bitcoins.

Earlier this week, the bitcoin price reacted to a report that the US authorities were able to get their hands on millions of dollars worth of bitcoins. As a result, concerns have arisen in the crypto market that bitcoin is not as safe and anonymous as previously thought.