ECB chief reveals family’s crypto losses

European Central Bank (ECB) President Christine Lagarde on Friday revealed that her son lost nearly all of his investments in digital assets, despite her warnings not to trust cryptocurrencies.

Lagarde, whose long-standing stance against the crypto market is well-known, told students at an event in Frankfurt that her son “ignored me royally” and “lost almost all the money that he had invested.”

“It wasn’t a lot but he lost it all, about 60% of it. So, when I then had another talk with him about it, he reluctantly accepted that I was right. I have, as you can tell, a very low opinion of cryptos,” she stated, noting, that while “people are free to invest their money where they want,” they “should not be free to participate in criminally sanctioned trade and business.”

Lagarde has two sons in their mid-30s and didn’t specify which she was talking about. She first admitted one was investing in crypto last year, adding at the time that she follows his activities “very carefully,” but would never invest in crypto herself.

The ECB chief has often called cryptocurrencies highly risky, speculative and worthless, and has on many occasions warned that they are not to be trusted, as they are often used by criminals for money laundering and other illegal activities. She has for long also been calling for global regulation of the crypto market.

Lagarde is enthusiastic, however, about central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) – a digital form of fiat money. The ECB has already announced its plans to launch a digital version of the euro and is currently in the “preparation phase” for this, and will need two years before it decides whether to roll it out, the regulator said last month.

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