Christine Lagarde, president of the European Central Bank (ECB), said all cryptocurrencies, including stablecoins and speculative assets, "are non currencies at all."

In a Sept. i interview with World Economic Forum founder and executive chair Klaus Schwab, Lagarde said cryptocurrencies "nowadays themselves as currencies," only she yet considered them as avails to be regulated and "supervised by asset regulators." Nether this definition, the ECB president claimed fiat-pegged digital currencies were also considered avails.

"Stablecoins are pretending to be a coin, but in fact it'southward completely associated with an bodily currency," said Lagarde. "For instance, some of them are saying that they can be used for transactions, but the value will be exactly aligned to the dollar."

She added that projects backside issuing whatsoever stablecoins should be required to fully back their assets with fiat:

"That needs to be checked, supervised, regulated and then that consumers and users of those devices can really be guaranteed confronting eventual misrepresentation. I think very recent history has shown that those reserve currencies were not always available and every bit liquid as they were intended to exist."

Lagarde may have been referring to Tether, the largest stablecoin issuer by market capitalization. The company recently agreed to pay $18.5 million in damages and submit to periodic reporting of their reserves until 2023 as part of a settlement with the Office of the New York Attorney General, who alleged that the stablecoin issuer had misrepresented the degree to which its USDT tokens were backed by fiat collateral.

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However, despite these seemingly stiff opinions on digital assets, Lagarde fabricated it clear that the ECB intended to respond to its customers. She has previously criticized stablecoins and cryptocurrencies, just didn't rule out the possibility the ECB would introduce a fundamental depository financial institution digital currency. In July, the ECB's governing council said it would launch the investigation phase of a digital euro project lasting 2 years.

"If customers adopt to use digital currencies rather than have banknotes and cash available, it should be bachelor," Lagarde said. "We should respond to that need and take a solution that is European based, that is secure, that is available, and friendly terms that can exist used as a means of payment."