CPB director: The Netherlands must ban bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies
The cabinet must quickly ban bitcoins and other cryptocurrencies. That writes director Pieter Hasekamp of the Central Planning Bureau (CPB) in an essay in the Financieele Dagblad. A cryptocurrency crash is inevitable, he says. That is why the Netherlands must intervene.
“For investors and governments, the last person to move is the loser. The Netherlands must now ban bitcoin,” Hasekamp writes in the newspaper. The CPB is an important advisor to the government. Hasekamp has been director since March 2020.
He is not afraid that a ban, like the drug trade, is doomed to failure. According to him, a ban leads to a decrease in value and could herald the end of cryptocurrencies. “After all, the product itself has no intrinsic value and derives its appeal only from acceptance by others.”
According to him, the ultimate step is a total ban on the production, trade and possession of crypto coins. In practice this will be difficult to maintain. Cryptocurrencies are not issued by financial institutions. Moreover, they are traded internationally and authorities generally have little control over them due to their decentralized nature. Minister of Finance Hoekstra therefore rejected a ban on cryptocurrencies in 2018.
