RBA’s governor says that there are many regulatory issues that need to be attended regarding cryptoactives
The Governor of the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA), Philip Lowe, recently warned that Libra, the digital currency announced by Facebook, could not reach the widespread use expected in the near future. He ensures that users must observe it and take care.
“There is a lot of water under the bridge before the Facebook proposal becomes something that we use all the time. There are many regulatory issues that need to be addressed and they have to make sure that there is a solid business case, so we have to be careful before drawing conclusions”, he said.
In 2017, Lowe also criticized the largest cryptocurrency by stock market capitalization, Bitcoin (BTC). At that time, he assured that the success on the price of that cryptoactive was due to the speculative “mania”. He commented that probably criminals felt more attracted by Bitcoin than clients.
Now Libra is the asset questioned, but not only by Lowe, but also by representatives of the governments of Russia, France, Spain, the United Kingdom and even US lawmakers and a part of the crypto community.
The announcement that Facebook would launch its own cryptocurrency has also caused differences within the cryptographic ecosystem. Although most of the opinions and expectations about this asset are quite positive, some government representatives comment that, until now, they do not see much future in this new proposal.
The Reasons
Lowe believes that the role of cryptocurrencies, in terms of being a means of electronic payment, is already fulfilled with the traditional electronic payment system or with fiat currencies.
“For a long time, I thought that a kind of cryptocurrency would not be successful in Australia because we already have a very efficient electronic payment system that allows any of us to make bank payments to another person in five seconds, just knowing their mobile phone number”.
The RBA even published a document called “Cryptocurrency: Ten Years On”, where it argued that cryptocurrencies would not achieve widespread adoption in Australia. “Bitcoin is unlikely to become a ubiquitous payment method”, it said.
The summary of this report states that “this article examines why Bitcoin is unlikely to become a ubiquitous payment method in Australia, and summarizes how subsequent cryptocurrencies have tried to address some of Bitcoin’s shortcomings, such as its volatility and scalability problems”.
Australia’s distrusts cryptoactives, even more Libra, which has not yet begun to operate in a massive way, but which belong to a technological giant that owns a large amount of data from its users.
The opinion of the governor of the Central Bank of Australia regarding Libra is similar to that of the Chairman of the Financial Market Committee of the State Duma of Russia, Anatoly Aksakov, who also disagrees with the use of this cryptocurrency in that territory.
In some weeks, it will be known the new point of view of Australia regarding the cryptography and the blockchain technology in general.
By María Rodríguez
