‘Stop Trying to Create Money!’: BIS Chief Carstens on Cryptocurrency

Even legendary scientist Isaac Newton tried — and failed — to create money out of nothing, he said, and young people should learn from his mistake.

On second thought, it’s worth quoting Carstens’ translated remarks at length:

“Glance back into the past and you will see that creating gold or money from nothing has been a regular obsession. It never worked. Even the great physicist Isaac Newton was at one point in his life obsessed by alchemy and the idea of making gold. He was very successful in a number of fields, but in this one he failed. Newton ended up as head of the British Mint. Why? Because he could detect at once if a coin was counterfeit. After he failed in his attempt to make gold, he switched sides and sent counterfeiters to prison. So my message to young people would be: Stop trying to create money!”