- ECB officials claimed that BTC’s rally will make non-holders and latecomers poor.
- The crypto community criticized the report calling for a policy against BTC.
Last weekend the European Central Bank (ECB) made the news the anti-Bitcoin of its top executives [BTC] report and calls for its ‘disappearance’.
They claimed that the price increase of BTC would lead to a redistribution of wealth from latecomers and non-holders to early adopters.
According to the report, this would impoverish late adopters and haves, as early adopters would dominate assets and wealth.
Source: SSRN
According to ECB officials Jurgen Schaff and Ulrich Bindseil, non-holders should advocate anti-BTC policies or campaign for it to ‘disappear’ altogether. Part of their research read,
“In any case, current non-holders should realize that they have compelling reasons to oppose Bitcoin and advocate for legislation against it, with the aim of preventing Bitcoin prices from rising or seeing Bitcoin disappear altogether.”
Does the ECB declare war on BTC?
The crypto community denounced the report, while some warned it could signal the ECB’s war on BTC.
Tuur Demeester, a BTC analyst, claimed that the investigation was the ECB’s declaration of war on the digital asset. He declared,
“This new article is a real declaration of war: the ECB claims that early bitcoin adopters are stealing economic value from latecomers. I strongly believe that the authorities will use this Luddite argument to introduce strict taxes or bans.”
Demeester cited the authors’ push for legislation as one of the compelling reasons for his projection.
“Then they will shamelessly advocate for legislation… “to prevent bitcoin prices from rising or see bitcoin disappear altogether” to prevent “the division of society.”
Source: SSRN
For his part, Max Keizer, a BTC maximalist and senior advisor to the President of El Salvador, Nayib Bukele on all matters surrounding Bitcoin, said: referred to the report as the ECB’s ‘failed IQ test’ on the digital asset.
“Bitcoin is an IQ test. The ECB has failed.”
Well, this wasn’t the first time the regulator criticized BTC. It is in February 2024 declared that the asset had no intrinsic value and was a bubble that would eventually burst and cause enormous social damage.
Later in June, Fabio Panetta, former director of the ECB and current governor of the Bank of Italy, said called for other banks to block crypto because it was doomed to failure.
In fact, even the supervisor criticized the US to approve spot BTC ETFs in the first quarter of 2024.
That said, some viewed the regulator’s anti-BTC thesis as an acknowledgment of the asset’s future explosive run.
According to Plan Ca market analyst, BTC was the solution to the regulator’s money printing (inflation) as a global easing cycle begins.
“This new ECB paper also contains a hidden signal: the ECB is sure that ‘Bitcoin will rise for good’, because the ECB is sure that central banks will soon and forever have to start printing ungodly amounts of money.”