Former Belgian finance minister calls for crypto ban, thanks to SVB

• Overtveldt, a member of the European Parliament and former Belgian finance minister, has called for a ban on cryptocurrency.
• Van Overtveldt made the remarks as the European Parliament prepares to vote on the region’s landmark crypto-licensing regulations.

In response to the turbulence in the banking industry, Johan Van Overtveldt, a member of the European Parliament and former finance minister of Belgium, called for a ban on cryptocurrencies in a Friday tweet.

Van Overtveldt made the remarks as the European Parliament is poised to vote on landmark crypto licensing laws for the region. Van Overtveldt is economic spokesperson for a group of 64 EU legislators.

“Another takeaway from the current banking turmoil.” Van Overtveldt tweeted, “Enforce a strict ban on cryptocurrencies. The assets are nothing more than speculative and have no economic or social value.

Reasons for such a move

“If a government bans drugs, it should also ban cryptocurrency,” he continued as fallout from the collapse of cryptocurrency-friendly Silvergate and Silicon Valley Bank hit European markets, sending Credit Suisse’s stock to a record low and requiring it to borrow 53 billion dollars. from the Swiss National Bank.

In the Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs, Van Overtveldt represents the right-wing European Conservatives and Reformers, the fifth largest political party in the parliament.

From 2014 to 2018, he served as Minister of Finance in Belgium.

The Markets in Crypto Assets rule, which would create a regulatory framework for wallet providers and exchanges if they comply with governance and consumer protection norms, is slated for a vote by parliament’s 705 members as soon as next month.

The central bank and crypto

The governor of the Belgian central bank, on the other hand, claims that his institution welcomed the 2022 decline in cryptocurrency prices and that the start of the crypto winter last year “was good news for us.”

The cryptocurrency “implosions” of the previous year, according to Governor Pierre Wunsch in Business AM, were “excellent news in themselves for us.” In this situation, “we” refers to “the regulators of the stability of the traditional financial system,” the media source observed.

Work on a new law allowing trading of securities based on distributed ledger technology was overseen by Van Overtveldt, who also stated that the technology underlying cryptocurrencies has “tremendous potential” to increase productivity.