The Deputy Governor of the Bank of France, Jean-Pierre Landau, also named “Mister Bitcoin” by the French government, submitted a report to Bruno Lemaire, the French Minister of Finance and Economy. The report said cryptocurrencies are in a phase of technological and economic experiment. Their future is still uncertain, however, there are few possible scenarios. One would be “a total collapse and extinction, or marginalization of all existing currencies,” which is very likely, he wrote, or “a ‘darwinian’ natural selection would see one or two dominant currencies emerge.”
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“Regulating Crypto Would Freeze an Evolving Technology”
Another possible scenario would be the birth of new actors from the digital world, social networks, or from e-commerce, who would develop their own payment systems or their own internal currencies. “In this particular phase, three principles should guide the public policies: (1) not to directly regulate the cryptocurrencies; (2) create a favorable environment for the development of the technology; (3) instead, carefully circumscribe the risks, which imposes to strictly limit exposure of the cryptocurrencies to the financial sector.
Jean-Pierre Landau
In January 2018, Jean-Pierre Landau was assigned on a mission by the French Minister of Economy and Finance to investigate and propose some orientations on the evolution of cryptocurrencies’ regulations. One of the main targets for this mission was also to fight against utilization of cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin for tax evasion, money laundering or funding of criminal and terrorists’ activities.
The Frenchman says too many regulations imposed on cryptocurrencies could bring innovators to avoid regulations and freezing a technology in evolution into legislation.
Recommendation to the French Government
In his report, submitted to the French government on July 5th, Landau described the ambition of cryptocurrency
