Finance ministers and central bankers from the world's top 20 largest economies meeting in Buenos Aires agreed to keep a watchful eye on cryptocurrencies on Tuesday and opened the door to regulating the booming industry at a later stage, Reuters reported.
The policymakers asked regulators to monitor these “crypto assets” but stopped to stop short of any specific action.
“We acknowledge that technological innovation, including that underlying crypto-assets, has the potential to improve the efficiency and inclusiveness of the financial system and the economy more broadly,” G20 leaders said in the communique.
They noted, however, that “crypto assets raise issues with respect to consumer and investor protection, market integrity, tax evasion, money laundering and terrorist financing.”
“We call on international standard-setting bodies (SSBs) to continue their monitoring of crypto-assets and their risks, according to their mandates, and assess multilateral responses as needed,” the leaders said.
G20 largely sees cryptocurrencies as too small to jeopardize financial markets. Their combined market value was, at its peak, less than one percent of the world’s economy, as the chair of the Financial Stability Board Mark Carney told the G20 in a letter.
But Argentina’s central bank governor Federico Sturzenegger said there had been demand at the summit to come up with specific recommendations on aspects such as data-gathering at the G20’s next gathering in July.