European Central Bank President Christine Lagarde revealed on November 24 that her son lost money investing in cryptocurrency.
Lagarde said her son lost “almost all his investments” by trading cryptocurrency against her warnings. At an event she said:
“He generously ignored me, which is his prerogative… And he lost almost all the money he invested. It wasn’t much, but he lost everything, he lost about 60% of it… So when I talked to him about it again, he reluctantly accepted that I was right.’
Lagarde added that she has a “very low opinion of cryptos.” She said while people are free to invest and speculate in the area, they are not allowed to engage in business and trade that involves criminal activities.
Lagarde addressed students at an event in Frankfurt, Germany. The event was called Euro20plus and was organized by the German central bank, Deutsche Bundesbank.
Lagarde is involved in ECB policy
Lagarde is otherwise involved in many of the ECB’s other activities related to the regulation of cryptocurrencies, stablecoins and digital assets.
In November 2022, Lagarde called for an update to the Markets in Crypto-Assets (MiCA) regulation called MiCA 2, which she said would be “broader [in] what it wants to regulate” than its predecessor. MiCA applies to custodial wallets and exchanges and certain crypto assets and stablecoins. MiCA 2, on the other hand, would address the regulation of decentralized DeFi platforms and issuer-less crypto assets, for example.
Although she had previously advocated for the MiCA 2 framework, Lagarde also discussed the then-collapse of FTX during that speech.
In October 2023, Lagarde released a statement describing progress around the digital euro, a central bank digital currency (CBDC) that could provide a regulated alternative to cryptocurrency. In May 2023, she advocated for CBDCs more broadly.