European Central Bank’s (ECB) President Mario Draghi said on Tuesday that banning or regulating Bitcoin (TIKER: BTC.EXANTE) is not the bank’s job, Reuters reported.
“Many of you posted questions about whether the ECB is going to ban Bitcoins or it’s going to regulate Bitcoins,” Draghi said in a video response to questions from the public.
“I have to say it’s not the ECB’s responsibility to do that.”
Draghi urged to think carefully before buying Bitcoin. He pointed out that the value of Bitcoin had oscillated much more wildly than that of the euro and that cryptocurrencies were not backed by any public institution.
As for blockchain, the ECB President said the distributed ledger technology used to record Bitcoin transactions, was “quite promising” and expected it to bring “many benefits,” but not yet safe enough for use by central banks.
“We’re very interested in this technology but it’s still not secure for central banking and therefore we need to look through it and investigate it more,” he said.
The world’s largest central bank chiefs are expected to discuss the issue of cryptocurrencies at a G20 meeting in Buenos Aires in March.