Urban Angehrn – the CEO of the Swiss Financial Market Supervisory Authority (FINMA), the top financial watchdog of Switzerland – says that there is a lot more the country and other nations can be doing to protect crypto and bitcoin investors.
Urban Angehrn on the State of Crypto Regulation
At the time of writing, many digital currencies are seriously down for the count. The world’s number one digital currency by market cap – bitcoin – has fallen by roughly 69 percent from its all-time high of about $68,000 per unit, which it achieved in late November of last year. The currency appears to be on its last legs as just a few weeks ago, it fell below the $20,000 mark for the first time in nearly two years.
Angehrn commented in a recent interview that the current state of the crypto world is a lot like the stock market in 1929, a year that has become synonymous with financial death. The markets crashed heavily during that time, and America appeared on the verge of bankruptcy. Angehrn said:
There’s much more that can be done. It would seem to me that a lot of trading in digital assets looks like the U.S. stock market in 1928, where all kinds of abuse [like] pump and dump are now in fact frequently common. Let’s also think about the potential of technology to make it easy to deal with the large amounts of data and to protect consumers from trading on abusive markets.
He raises a rather controversial point, as protecting people would mean that there would likely have to be more regulation set in place. This is a rough situation and a two-sided coin (pun intended) in many ways, as while regulation would likely see that less fraud and volatility took place, it would also go against the very notions of crypto given that the industry was set to provide its users with full financial autonomy and independence.
If more regulation was set in stone, it’s not unlikely we would see the digital currency world take on a more centralized form similar with what players witness in the arena of traditional banks and institutions. There would be middlemen, third parties, and other prying eyes.
Switzerland Is a Major Crypto Player
Switzerland is one of the world’s biggest crypto players. The nation is known for its loose regulations and crypto tax laws, and it is even home to what’s become known as “Crypto Valley.” The area – which takes part of its name from Silicon Valley, a region of Northern California that houses some of the world’s leading tech firms like Google, Meta, and Microsoft – is instead home to several of the world’s biggest crypto and blockchain startups.
This year has been a heavier year for blockchain regulation, with Joe Biden recently issuing a crypto executive order (the first of its kind).
