Fed’s Kashkari says Cryptocurrency is a farce

Neel Kashkari is the  President of the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis and like many other US central bankers he has jumped on the bandwagon and condemned cryptocurrencies.

In a Q&A session which mainly focused on monetary policy the central banker responded to a question about cryptocurrencies by saying they are a “farce”.

This is not the first time he has said something like this as had some similar comments back in May:

“It’s a clever idea that some people came up with, but now it’s being taken to ridiculous extremes,”  Kashkari then commented  “The barrier to entry to creating a new cryptocurrency is zero.”

“If you can dupe enough people to buy it, you can pretend that you’ve launched something. And you can say, ‘Look, I’m a billionaire because I sold you one. And I own the other 999 million of them, so that means I’m a billionaire! So it has become a farce”¦I’m seeing more noise and more fraud than I’m seeing anything useful.”

It’s fair to say be is not a fan, we must remember why. Cryptocurrencies put their whole system under threat and for good reason too. Decentralized currencies can not be manipulated in the same way that fiat currencies can. Just today Fed Chair Powell said the Fed are going to start increasing their balance sheet again and may be looking to buy treasuries (government debt). Printing money is at the foundation of the Federal Reserve so if Bitcoin or any other cryptocurrencies  triumph  they will no longer have control.