In the European Parliament plenary debate on the ECB Annual Report for 2016 (Strasbourg, 5 February 2018), President Mario Draghi make some brief declarations about cryptocurrencies:
One or two speakers touched on Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. Let me first say that we are not observing a systemically relevant holding of digital currencies by supervised institutions – by banks, in other words. Actually, the credit institutions established in the European Union are showing a limited appetite for digital currencies like Bitcoin, notwithstanding the high level of public interest. However, recent developments, such as the listing of Bitcoin futures contracts by US exchanges, could lead European banks too to hold positions in Bitcoin, and therefore we will certainly look at that.However, we should understand that Bitcoin and other digital currencies are in the unregulated space and should be regarded as very risky assets. Virtual currencies are subject to high volatility and their prices are entirely speculative. Banks should measure the risk of any holdings of digital currencies in their portfolio accordingly. Right now, digital currencies are not subject to a specific supervisory approach. Work is under way in the Single Supervisory Mechanism to identify potential prudential risks that these digital assets could pose to supervised institutions.
Then the central bank's chief supervisor Daniele Nouy told CNBC that "We scrutinize the issue in a regulatory perspective, we are ready to do something if it was needed, but so far it's not exactly very high on our to-do list".
On the other side, ECB board member Yves Mersch said that “Since this hype accelerated at the end of last year it has moved higher up on the agenda . . . what I do not like is the public hype driving this thing”. And he added: “We are currently more concerned about the social and psychological effect they seem to have ... there is so much money flowing in that it’s like a gold rush — but there is no gold”
So, as you can see, even at the top of the European Central Bank there are different points of view about cryptos.