ECB President’s View: The Banks In Europe Could Soon Start To Hold Bitcoin

The ECB’s president announced publicly, that European banks could hold bitcoin tokens, such as Bitcoin futures, which are listed in US exchanges.

The president Mario Draghi weighed in on the topic of cryptocurrencies referencing their discussions by other speakers during the meeting. He said, that the authority hadn’t observed any current trend of European banks holding cryptocurrencies. Moreover, he said that financial institutions from EU show limited interest in cryptocurrencies.

The central banker admitted, that the trend could change with the advent of cryptocurrencies permeating into mainstream finance. He said in a statement:

 “However, recent developments, such as the listing of Bitcoin futures contracts by US exchanges, could lead European banks too to hold positions in Bitcoin, and therefore we will certainly look at that.”

The EU central banking head also hinted at an upcoming uniform oversight via a ‘Single Supervisory Mechanism’ to oversee digital assets’ risks toward supervised institutions, or banks.

Previously, Draghi had stated, the ECB had no competence of regulating bitcoin, but his recent remarks suggested a new approach to bitcoin and altcoins among EU banks and possibly nations. Later that month in October 2016, Draghi said that cryptocurrencies hadn’t matured enough for the ECB to consider regulation.

Draghi stated in November, that bitcoin and the wider cryptocurrency sector’s impact was “pretty limited” and did not pose any risks for central banks as decentralized cryptocurrencies, that deny the control of money supply through financial institutions.