FRANKFURT (Reuters) – No one is a prophet in his country: the president of the European Central Bank, Christine Lagarde, admitted on Friday that one of her two sons had lost “almost all” of his investments in cryptoassets, despite numerous warnings.

Christine Lagarde has long opposed cryptocurrencies, which she considers speculative, worthless and often associated with money laundering activities.

“He ignored me royally, which is his right,” Christine Lagarde said during a conference given to students in Frankfurt. “And he lost almost all the money he had invested.”

“It wasn’t much, but he lost everything, he lost around 60%,” Christine Lagarde continued. “When I talked to him about it again, he finally admitted, reluctantly, that I was right.”

The president of the ECB, who has two sons in their thirties, did not specify which one it was.

The ECB calls for the crypto-asset sector to be regulated on a global scale, in order to protect consumers who are not always aware of the risks to which they are exposed, and in order to limit the use of these assets for laundering funds.

The fear that these currencies issued by non-state groups could replace official currencies was one of the reasons why the ECB launched its own digital euro project, although the central bank is still very far from being able to deploy it .

Last month, the bank began the “preparation phase” of the digital euro, but said it would take another two years before it would be able to decide whether to roll it out.

“As you can see, I have a very bad opinion of cryptocurrencies,” Christine Lagarde said. “People are free to invest their money wherever they want, people are free to speculate as much as they want, (but) people should not be free to participate in activities that fall under the law.” .

(Report by Balazs Koranyi, Corentin Chappron)

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