Christine Lagarde Approved As New President of European Central Bank; Good For Cryptocurrencies?

Out of the 649 European parliament-voting members, Christine Lagarde won in the secret ballot with 394 votes as 206 voters opposed. Christine who is the former managing director at IMF will be taking the seat of the outgoing president Mario Draghi. She appears more open-minded in the banking sector division compared to the outgoing president Mario.

Parliament has just approved Christine @Lagarde to be the next President of the @ecb pic.twitter.com/1fTeugBwMN

— ECON Committee Press (@EP_Economics) September 17, 2019

The outgoing IMF managing director-Dragi had previously categorized Bitcoin and other digital money as assets and not currencies. Lagarde is seen to have a clearly different opinion on this issue. In April, she stated in CNBC interview that crypto-currencies were having an impact that is clear on the banks. She went ahead and said that these digital currencies and blockchain systems issued by the central bank were bringing about changes in the banks, business models.

Lagarde is not so much interested in digital currencies and other forms of decentralized money. She stated in the interview that some of these innovations would make the banks lose the required stability. She also added that disruptions that she is interested in are not of the likes of Bitcoins that are shaking the system.

It is now clear that the new head of the European Central bank will not be in favor of all crypto/assets or currencies. She is only interested in the few that have no direct impact on changing the system rather they do it slowly.

During an interview on October 2017, Lagarde stated that it is important not to look at all the digital currencies with the same eye. For this reason, there will be efforts to legally identify the different categories of digital assets. Christine is seen to be in favor of the centralized efforts towards digital currencies from ongoing entities. The digital money industry will possibly find itself in a state of legislation that will not be in their favor.

Christine Lagarde’s appointment will clearly come with changes resulting from the regulatory programs that might see the digital assets plus other related solution as a disadvantage in the industry