Background
Today there appeared multiple claims that the ECB is planning on banning cryptocurrencies in Europe all over the web.
While there are actual news, those news turned into a storm of FUD and wrong information. I am German and so is the relevant news article. So let's go through what was actually announced:
Picture: Cointelegraph.com
Article explained
What the article states is that the ECB is concerned about the recent development of ICOs and offerings of "digital shares", which in some cases ended in dangerous and fraudulent scenarios.
Therefore they raised the if these investment opportunities need regulation and how this can be achieved.
China's recent ICO ban is mentioned but it is highlighted that the motives for this and the urgency it was conducted cannot be compared to the situation in Europe. Reason for this is that the European system is not as prone to circumvention of regulations and illegal international payments by using digital currencies - as opposed by the economic system of China.
What does this mean?
In my opinion, this is barely newsworthy. It should have been obvious to most that governments will start regulation of ICOs sooner or later, as these can be seen as masked IPOs - stock and share sales without regulatory body. And this does not necessarily have to be a bad thing, depending on how far those regulations will go.
In any case, a prompt and unexpected ban or regulation of ICOs is very unlikely as the urgency for this is not given.
In addition there are no mentions of regulating or banning cryptocurrencies in general - in fact only a couple of days ago the ECB president made a press statement that the European Central Bank has no power to ban Bitcoin (and most likely referred to cryptocurrencies by that).
https://cointelegraph.com/news/european-central-bank-president-no-power-to-regulate-bitcoin
So all in all no big news, it just appears to be another cheap FUD attempt.
What is your opinion on the article? What do you think of ICO regulations? Good, bad, don't care?
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