There's plenty of valid criticisms against crypto, I feel like they've picked some of the weakest ones. > cryptocurrencies are used because people think they will one day replace traditional money Maybe a tiny minority, sounds like a strawman. > a contagious story in which people believe because other people believe in it Isn't fiat the same? Money only has value because people believe it has value / will have value…
The Netherlands is a country that keeps its citizens under a tax slavery, that will make sure 80 to 85 % of all income you earn over the course of your lifetime will be taken away.
Taken away in progressive income taxes, property taxes, inheritance taxes, pension taxes etc... Despite the massive levels of taxation citizen benefits are nowhere near the levels of Nordic countries like Denmark, Sweden or Finland.
Medical insurance has been privatized and its one of the more expensive in the world. Most Dutch residents will even boast their medical insurance bills are only in the 250 to 350 EUR range has they have been led to believe. They forget to check the percentage that is taken from their salary contributions, what makes it for the middle class at the same high levels of insurance as in the US.
With the exception of a family of 5 persons, who by law, does not have to pay taxes, this has a massive effect of quickly dividing the population into two very distinctive camps:
A camp that has to be very politically docile, as this large amount of population, are completely dependent on governments handouts around social housing, child subsidies, the famous and numerous "Uitkering's", etc....
The other part of population , a large middle class, is quickly made to understand any additional working efforts, that could produce any additional income will be quickly taken away by very aggressive levels of taxation. So you better go home at 4 PM or work just 4 days per week, as it is common in the country. This is sometimes touted by political spin doctors as an example of the middle class "high quality of life". It does have it advantages, but its simply not the core reason.
This makes for a very stable and homogeneous society. All those common rows of all equal houses that see in these Dutch pictures or google maps... Makes you come out of your house, look at the house of neighbor and think, neither is doing much better than me and neither I am doing that bad :-))
The country also has much smaller levels of income disparity compared to what is seen in many other European countries. It is common to see in a Dutch company, just 4 to 6 different salary levels including the CEOs. Some European countries like Spain or Italy ( lets not even talk the US), have income level between regular workers and company administrators can have a 40x to 50x difference.
So, although crypto at the moment, has serious issues around its climate impact and scalability of transaction settlement, that is the last thing in this gentleman mind. He is thinking, control and nothing else. The reason why he considers it "urgent" is the lack of societal control it will imply.
Depending on your social values and priorities, you might see this statement from a Central Bank head as: - The biggest argument against crypto. or - The biggest endorsement of the advantages of crypto currency as touted by many of its believers.
The future of crypto as a concept will probably not be Bitcoin, Ethereum but something else. Still, we should not forget what is also at play here is political control of citizens. The last thing on the mind of this central bank is investors protection.
You just have to see the historical record of this specific central bank, and their 100% incompetence in protecting these same investors, they so much talk about now, against the past bankruptcy of large Dutch financial institutions.
The Netherlands is currently a healthy democracy, but you just have to look around. The more repressive societies are the most interested in abolishing crypto or forcing citizens to adopt a "specific" digital currency: https://www.wsj.com/articles/china-creates-its-own-digital-c...