Adam Tooze over at his substack Chartbook:
Bitcoin has no reason to exist. It delivers no meaningful benefit for society. It is a form of gambling, propelled by naked greed and generating vast quantities of CO2 emissions.
This was the uncompromising and hostile position towards crypto taken on behalf of the ECB by Executive Board member Fabio Panetta in December 2021, a campaign which Panetta continues today…
Panetta’s stance is the hard edge of what amounts to a global push to regulate the crypto currency business, a push which has gathered significant pace in recent months.
China has taken the lead by going a long way towards banning both the use of crypto as a means of payment and bitcoin mining. Egypt, Morocco, Algeria, Bolivia, Bangladesh and Nepal have followed China’s lead.
Countries that have restricted the ability of banks to deal with crypto-assets or prohibited their use for payment transactions include Nigeria, Namibia, Colombia, Ecuador, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Turkey, Iran, Indonesia, Vietnam and Russia.
In the financial centers of the West, in EU, UK and US, regulators, politicians and lobbyists are jostling to decide what will be the rules of the game.
It seems that we have reached a turning point in the development of the industry. For many this is the end of the “Wild West” phase of crypto’s development.
More here.