Head of Bank of Japan is pouring criticism on BTC, that pushed Bitcoin price $2,000 down
In an interview with Bloomberg yesterday, Bank of Japan governor Haruhiko Kuroda questioned Bitcoin’s use case in an interview yesterday. In it, Kuroda stated that most Bitcoin transactions are highly speculative. Furthermore, Bitcoin exhibits unusually high volatility. BTC is rarely used as a means of payment. Earlier today, Bitcoin price slid to the $36,500 level from the $38,303.
BTC/USD 4-hour chart | Source: TradingView
Head of Bank of Japan is pouring criticism on BTC, that pushed Bitcoin price $2,000 down
Bank of Japan is currently testing a digital yen, the digital version of its fiat currency, but remains shaky on the topic of cryptocurrencies.
Haruhiko Kuroda, governor of the Bank of Japan (BOJ)
Kuroda said, questioning the use of Bitcoin as a means of investment compared to traditional financial assets:
“Most of the trading is speculative and volatility is extraordinarily high. It’s barely used as a means of settlement.”
The remarks are similar to those made by Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell from earlier this year when he said that the cryptocurrency market is largely a vehicle for speculation. The Central Bank of Japan has largely allowed the public use of cryptocurrencies and is generally favorable to crypto businesses such as exchange and wallet services.
Over $1 billion was traded on local exchanges yesterday alone, with Bitcoin, Ethereum, and MonaCoin seen as crowd favorites. But the bank has largely shifted its focus to stablecoins such as the US dollar – over the past year. Reports suggest that the digital yen has undergone limited testing in a sandbox environment, highlighted by the ongoing Coronavirus panic and the need to move away from paper money.
In this regard, Kuroda said stablecoins have assets to back up their value compared to cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin:
“Stable coins must also meet legal standards and healthy governance codes, so they could become a convenient way of payment in the future.”
Meanwhile, Kuroda says that no one has solved the Bitcoin problem, the data says otherwise. On-chain data from tracker YCharts shows that Bitcoin had over 214,000 individual transactions yesterday, almost half of this year’s peak of 398,000 in January 2021. Still, it’s less than Ethereum, the most used blockchain in the world, on the other hand. The protocol settled over 1.2 million on-chain transactions yesterday.
Read more:
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