Advisor to the Central Bank of the United Kingdom: I am not very worried about cryptocurrencies

It is obvious why central and commercial banks do not like decentralized forms of financing. Giving financial control to people takes it away from them, along with their fatty profits and the bonuses of a big bank boss.

A senior adviser to the Bank of England said that cryptocurrencies do not pass fundamental financial tests and do not occupy one of the first places on the list of problems. In a conversation with Bloomberg, Ha Van Steenis, Senior Advisor to the Governor of the Bank of England, added that he “doesn’t care much about cryptocurrencies.”

Van Steenis, the former head of Morgan Stanley, is currently working on a review of the future of finance and financial technology for the Bank of England. Showing a somewhat limited understanding of what Bitcoin and cryptocurrency can do, he added:  

They are not an excellent unit of exchange, they have no value and they are slower.

When Van Steenis was asked if cryptocurrencies could be a threat to the economy or the central banking system, he admitted that the threat was real.  

Anyone who has done an international transfer from a bank and compared it with the minutes or even the seconds it takes to cryptocurrency will understand what is being said here. Ha Van Steenis admitted that bank customers want something cheaper, faster and better, and that banks are investing huge amounts of money in developing technologies that provide this. But most banks still have high fees and more than a 24-hour waiting period for cross-border transactions, which makes them extremely archaic in contrast to the blockchain scope.  

On the question of what tomorrow’s banks and platforms will be like, Van Steenis rather evasively stated that it is too early to talk about it. From the highly slanted interview it is clear that the Bank of England is still very wary of technology and, in particular, digital currencies.  

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