Bank of England’s governor Mark Carney has declared during a speech in Toronto that digital currencies are no risk to the financial environment.
At the Public Policy Forum’s Canada Growth Summit held on 12 April, Carney suggested that digital currencies were “no risk” to the financial world as yet, despite the “huge amount” of illicit activity attached to them. His comments, echoed in a letter he sent to the recent G20 summit in Argentina, argued that as yet, these currencies are no risk as they are not attached to the financial system and still small.
Former Bank of Canada head Carney has continued to push for tighter regulation for cryptocurrencies over past years, suggesting that without regulation they are open to abuse when exchanged against fiat currencies, saying, “there’s plenty of serious abuse or at a minimum, they are very porous to a cyber attack and theft and they just do not meet the standards.”
In Carney’s home country, the Bank of Canada recently stated that globally aligned policies governing cryptocurrencies are needed. The Ontario Securities Commission (OSC) stated this month that it was currently gathering information on several cryptocurrency trading platforms after receiving complaints about their activities.
This OSC move comes amid the rise of exchanges to trade digital currencies, as well as initial coin offerings to launch new ones. Sharp rises in prices for the new currencies last year created an upsurge of interest in Canadian startups.
The Bank of England governor has always been skeptical about introducing digital currencies into the financial system. He stated earlier this year that the cryptocurrency ecosystem could be incorporated if the same regulatory approach and “rigorous standard” used in conventional financial systems were applied to cryptocurrencies.
Carney’s views on cryptocurrencies have softened in recent months, commenting recently that digital currencies like Bitcoin should be regarded as assets.
