Kenneth Rogoff, a Harvard economist and a former chief economist at the International Monetary Fund (IMF), claims that governments and central banks are “far behind the curve” when it comes to regulating cryptocurrencies. To “distract the conversation,” he continued, officials have floated the idea of central bank digital currency (CBDCs).
He added that you must currently consider why the United States issuing a CBDC before you can answer that question. Because by making small changes to the current system, they can do a lot of things in the same way
“I think central banks are way behind the curve, and governments in general, in regulating cryptocurrencies. They throw out the idea of having CBDCs to distract the conversation.”
Rogoff responded, “I think it feels like the 1990s and early 2000s to me when the financial system was inventing all these clever new financial engineering devices and saying “catch me if you can,” “regulate me if you can,” when asked why central banks and governments are delaying regulating cryptocurrencies.
“I hear very much the same things from the young cryptocurrency pioneers and there are a lot of ideas. But they are wrong that they can’t be regulated.”
Rogoff has always been critical of bitcoin. He has earlier issued a warning that governments and central banks would never permit BTC to become widely accepted. He stated in 2018 that cryptocurrency was more likely to be worth $100 than $100,000 in ten years.
He concluded by stating that, if we take out the potential for money laundering and tax evasion, the practical uses of cryptocurrency as a means of exchange are quite limited.