No single country can stop cryptocurrency, warns IMF

Gita Gopinath, the IMF’s senior economist disclosed this while speaking during a lecture for the New Delhi-based economics think-tank, the National Council of Applied Economic Research.

According to the IMF, regulating cryptocurrency will require a determined global effort and a global accord on crypto, which most would argue is still a long way off.

The IMF senior economist further said that if governments stop cryptocurrency transactions in their countries, they will have no control over offshore exchanges that are not subject to their country’s legislation, which might lead to them being completely ignored.

“There are challenges to banning it whether you can end up with truly banning crypto because many exchanges are offshore and they are not subject to regulations of a particular country.”

Furthermore, she stated that bans could not be a passive phenomenon and would involve “monitoring, supervision, and regulation.”

Gopinath added that a global effort was required, saying, “No individual country can solve this problem on their own, given how easy it is to do these transactions cross-border. So there is a need for global policy on that front. And I think that’s needed urgently.”

She claimed that cryptocurrency adoption was gaining traction in emerging economies and this poses problems.

“It seems to be more attractive to adopt crypto assets and cryptocurrencies in emerging developing economies than in advanced economies. If you look at take up around the world we are certainly seeing that there’s a rapid amount of adoption that’s happening in emerging and developing economies,” she said.

Gopinath said that if people are using cryptocurrency as an investment class then the same kinds of regulations that apply to security traders and security brokers should also apply to crypto-assets.