ECB payments experts sound the death knell for bitcoin

finextra.com:

The value of bitcoin peaked at $69,000 in November 2021 before falling to $17,000 by mid-June 2022. Since then, the value has fluctuated around $20,000. "For bitcoin proponents, the seeming stabilisation signals a breather on the way to new heights," they write.

"More likely, however, it is an artificially induced last gasp before the road to irrelevance - and this was already foreseeable before FTX went bust and sent the bitcoin price to well below $16,000."In the mid-2010s, the hope that bitcoin's value would inevitably rise to ever new heights began to dominate the narrative. But bitcoin is neither suitable as an investment or even as a real-world means of payments, the blog argues."Speculative bubbles rely on new money flowing in. Bitcoin has also repeatedly benefited from waves of new investors," the blog continues, pointing out that big bitcoin investors have the strongest incentives to keep the euphoria going and have hired armies of lobbyists to push their case with lawmakers and regulators.

This activity has led lawmakers to sometimes facilitate the influx of funds by supporting the supposed merits of bitcoin and offering regulation that gave the impression that crypto assets are just another asset class."The current regulation of cryptocurrencies is partly shaped by misconceptions," the authors state. "The belief that space must be given to innovation at all costs stubbornly persists. Since bitcoin is based on a new technology - DLT / blockchain - it would have a high transformation potential.