European Union Commissioner for Financial Affairs Pierre Moscovici says he does not consider Bitcoin (TIKER: BTC.EXANTE) as an alternative currency.
“At this stage, we do not consider Bitcoin as an alternative currency, not like the Euro,” Moscovici said in an interview with Bloomberg.
“Sometimes speculation is overactive or exuberant — We look at that and analyzed the phenomenon, but we don’t think we have to react to bitcoin at this stage as a political and technical body,” he added.
According to him, politicians and regulators from the region are not eventalking about regulating Bitcoin.
“We are not having those conversations right now,” Moscovici emphasized.
This relaxed attitude appears to contradict statements by other EU regulators like Valdis Dombrovskis, Vice President of the European Commission for the Euro and Social Dialogue, who believes that the EU should act quickly and urgently to the new market forces created by cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin.
Leaders within the EU also recently agreed on regulations which require not only cryptocurrency exchanges but also “wallet providers” to ask for proof of identification from their users and customers.