ECB’s Christine Lagarde Says Son Lost All in Crypto

Christine Lagarde, the European Central Bank (ECB) President has shared an amusing story of how her son lost all his investment in a crypto venture. 

Christine Lagarde Advocates Subtle Caution

As reported by Reuters, Christine Lagarde made this revelation when speaking to a group of students in Frankfurt at a Town Hall, noting that her son turned deaf ears to her warnings to invest in cryptocurrencies.

“He ignored me royally, which is his privilege,” Lagarde told a town hall with students in Frankfurt. “And he lost almost all the money that he had invested.”

The ECB boss is one of the biggest critics of crypto, taking every opportunity she has to label the nascent asset class as risky ventures. Under her reign as the ECB President, Christine Lagarde led the apex bank to venture out on its own mission to explore Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) dubbed Digital Euro as its way to combat the growing dominance of privately issued cryptocurrencies.

Lagarde believes investors who choose crypto may learn the hard way like her son as she believes the asset is speculative, worthless and a tool often used by criminals for illicit activity.

“I have, as you can tell, a very low opinion of cryptos,” Lagarde said. “People are free to invest their money where they want, people are free to speculate as much as they want, (but) people should not be free to participate in criminally sanctioned trade and businesses.”

Factoring MiCA and Global Crypto Regulatory Push

It is worth noting that Christine Lagarde’s personal opinion contradicts the essence of the Markets in Crypto Assets (MiCA) regulation being pushed out by the European Union. 

MiCA aims to bring out the best in the digital currency ecosystem by bringing players in the industry under compliance. With the advent of MiCA which is set to be implemented starting next year, the bad tag crypto carries may finally be removed.

The advent of MiCA has set the pace for other major economies to explore a similar regulatory pathway, a trend whose ripple effect can add more fuel to the ongoing evolution of the cryptocurrency industry.