The President of the European Central Bank said in a video posted to Twitter that dozens of centralized banking systems are becoming interested in cryptocurrencies.
The European Central Bank (ECB) is “the central bank for Europe’s single currency, the euro. Its main task is to maintain the euro’s purchasing power.” The ECB administers monetary policy of the eurozone—the region of European Union (EU) countries using the Euro—and consists of 19 EU member states.
Christine Lagarde is President of the ECB and recently revealed a large number of central banks are “looking at” digital currencies.
Lagarde appeared in a video posted by @GoldTelegraph_, the Twitter account of Gold Telegraph, an organization that delivers news about gold, commodities, macroeconomics, mining, and tech. Before she explained that digital currencies “could be used like banknotes,” the ECB president revealed how many central banks are interested in the new currency format.
“There are, you know, At least 80 central banks around the world that are looking at digital currencies,” Lagarde said in the video. “We think that it’s a duty of us [sic] to actually have available digital currencies that would operate to the benefit of our consumers.”
Digital currencies are “coming regardless if you like it or not,” reads the tweet’s tagline.
Here’s the video:
Cryptocurrency is not only “coming,” it’s apparently already here in big ways. Sotheby’s—one of the world’s largest brokers of fine and decorative art, jewelry, real estate, and collectibles—just set the world record for the most expensive piece of jewelry ever sold for cryptocurrency, auctioning off a 101.38-carat diamond for $12.3 million of either Bitcoin or Ether on Friday, according to Fox Business.
And according to CNBC, Circle, a payments and digital currency firm, is planning to go public later this year and is expected to close the deal in the fourth quarter and would value the company at $4.5 billion.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk recently said that Tesla will accept bitcoin once it confirms there is reasonable clean energy usage by miners. “When there’s confirmation of reasonable (~50%) clean energy usage by miners with positive future trend, Tesla will resume allowing Bitcoin transactions,” Musk wrote in a tweet.
Jon Fleetwood is Managing Editor for American Faith.
