Former Belgian Finance Minister calls for a crypto ban, thanks to SVB

• Overtveldt, a member of the European Parliament and former Belgian finance minister, has called for a cryptocurrency prohibition.
• Van Overtveldt made the statements 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 a former finance minister of Belgium, called for a ban on cryptocurrencies in a Friday tweet.

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

“Another thing to take away from the present banking uproar.”  Van Overtveldt tweeted, “Enforce a severe prohibition on cryptocurrencies. The assets are nothing more than speculative and have no economic or social value.

Reasons for such a move

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

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

From 2014 until 2018, he served as the finance minister of Belgium. 

The Markets in Crypto Assets rule, which will create a regulatory framework for wallet providers and exchanges if they adhere to governance and consumer-protection norms, is scheduled for a vote by the 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 excellent news for us.”

The cryptocurrency “implosions” of the previous year, according to Governor Pierre Wunsch of 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.

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