Article 3J1VN 'Fight fire with fire': IMF's Lagarde calls for bitcoin crackdown

'Fight fire with fire': IMF's Lagarde calls for bitcoin crackdown

by
Richard Partington
from Economics | The Guardian on (#3J1VN)

IMF chief says cryptocurrency's own blockchain technology could be used to control it

Christine Lagarde has called for a crackdown on bitcoin by using the technology behind the digital currency to "fight fire with fire".

The head of the International Monetary Fund said authorities around the world could harness the potential of cryptocurrencies to help bring them under control, warning that failure to do so would allow the unfettered development of a "potentially major new vehicle for money laundering and the financing of terrorism".

Bitcoin is the first, and the biggest, "cryptocurrency" - a decentralised tradeable digital asset. Whether it is a bad investment is the big question. Bitcoin can only be used as a medium of exchange and in practice has been far more important for the dark economy than it has for most legitimate uses. The lack of any central authority makes bitcoin remarkably resilient to censorship, corruption - or regulation. That means it has attracted a range of backers, from libertarian monetarists who enjoy the idea of a currency with no inflation and no central bank, to drug dealers who like the fact that it is hard (but not impossible) to trace a bitcoin transaction back to a physical person.

Continue reading...
External Content
Source RSS or Atom Feed
Feed Location http://feeds.theguardian.com/theguardian/business/economics/rss
Feed Title Economics | The Guardian
Feed Link https://www.theguardian.com/business/economics
Feed Copyright Guardian News & Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. 2024
Reply 0 comments