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As Bitcoin Sinks, Top ECB Banker Makes Bleak Warning Over Bitcoin 'Bubble' (forbes.com)
Bitcoin prices last year rocketed from under $1,000 at the beginning of the year to almost $20,000 before falling back throughout 2018. (Photo by Alain Pitton/NurPhoto via Getty Images) GETTY

The bitcoin price dropped around 15% over the last two days, as a fork of the bitcoin cash cryptocurrency (itself a fork of the original bitcoin) cast a dark cloud over the bitcoin industry, with two prominent early bitcoin adopters threatening to go to war over their differences.

Coeure's comments reflect bitcoin's massive price rise over recent years, which saw the value of one bitcoin explode from under $1,000 at the beginning of 2017, to almost $20,000 by the end of the year.

While 2018 has seen the value of bitcoin and the wider cryptocurrency market sharply decline, prices remain far above where they were before last year's bull run. "Bitcoin was an extremely clever idea.

Sadly, not every clever idea is a good idea," the European Central Bank Executive Board member said at the Bank for International Settlements in Basel. 

"Few remember that Satoshi embedded the genesis block with a Times headline from January 2009 about U.K. banks’ bailout. In more ways than one, bitcoin is the evil spawn of the financial crisis."

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Bitcoin was created by the mysterious Satoshi Nakamoto 10 years ago towards the end of 2008, following the collapse of Lehman Brothers and the beginning of the global financial crisis.

Coeure was speaking after International Monetary Fund managing director Christine Lagarde urged central banks to look into issuing digital currencies of their own earlier this week. 


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The bitcoin price has soared over the last 24 months, though has slipped from its highs at the end of last year.

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Elsewhere, U.S. economist Nouriel Roubini, an outspoken critic of bitcoin and decentralized cryptocurrencies, said bitcoin was headed for a price of zero."I could gloat about bitcoin collapsing 10% in a day to $5700. But that is still some way to zero where bitcoin belongs.

Actually, since bitcoin is The Mother of All Toxic Pollutions & Environmental Disasters its true fair value is highly negative with the right externality tax," Roubini, who teaches at New York University's Stern School of Business and is chairman of Roubini Macro Associates LLC, an economic consultancy firm, told bitcoin news site AMBCrypto.


I am a journalist with significant experience covering technology, finance, economics, and business around the world. As the founding editor of Verdict.co.uk I reported on how technology is changing business, political trends, and the latest culture and lifestyle.

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Disclosure: I occasionally hold some small amount of bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies
    • 1
    Francisco Gimeno - BC Analyst "...bitcoin is the evil spawn of the financial crisis". These words should be engraved for the future when this ECB Banker has to retire or reinvent himself toward with a fully tokenised digital economy in the next future.