Johan Van Overtveldt, Member of the European Parliament and former Belgian Finance Minister, urged for a ban on cryptocurrency in response to banking sector instability in a tweet posted on Friday. As the European Parliament sets out to vote on crucial crypto licensing regulations intended for the whole bloc, Van Overtveldt, an economic spokesperson for a coalition of 64 EU deputies, asserted that crypto is just speculation with no economic or social benefit. “Let this recent banking chaos be another lesson to enforce a firm prohibition on cryptocurrencies,” he declared.
Furthermore, Van Overtveldt has called for a ban on crypto if the government bans drugs. Also, this comes as a repercussion of the failure of Silvergate and Silicon Valley Bank intensifies in European markets, including sending shares of Credit Suisse to a record low and forcing it to borrow $53 billion from the Swiss National Bank.
Also, Van Overtveldt is part of the right-wing European Conservatives and Reformers, the fifth-largest political grouping in the European Parliament’s Economic and Monetary Affairs Committee. He was Belgium’s finance minister from 2014 to 2018. The ECR claims to be dedicated to “individual liberty .. private property … limited government.”
The Parliament’s 705 lawmakers are expected to vote as soon as next month on the Markets in Crypto Assets regulation, which will set out a regulatory framework for wallet providers and exchanges if they abide by the specified governance and consumer-protection norms. Van Overtveldt has also been at the forefront of creating a new law that enables trading securities based on distributed ledger technology and has stated that the technology behind crypto has “great potential” to enhance productivity.
