On Monday 25 January EU Parliament's Economic and Monetary Affairs Committee held a public hearing on cryptocurrencies and their increasing influence on economic and social processes in society.
Discussion questions also included such topics as the role of regulators and other state institutions, advantages and disadvantages of digital currencies, and possible risks of using cryptotechnologies.
As known, after last year’s Paris terrorist attacks, which shook the whole world, a number of politicians and representatives of world financial establishment made statements about the need of tighter control over turnover of digital currencies and utilization of cryptotechnologies. Voices were also raised in favour of the total ban of virtual currencies, but Monday’s public hearing has shown that most probably a more balanced approach to this question will prevail.
“It's easy to fail when you regulate; you can be too early and too late. From the European Commission's perspective, we are more on the monitoring side. We want to understand better what is happening,” said Olivier Salles, a representative of European Commission, in an interview with Reuters.
Salles has confirmed that European Union is doing everything possible to prevent money laundering and other criminal activity, but he highlighted that there is no rush in dealing with questions connected to regulation of financial products associated with virtual currencies.
Many speakers have mentioned Paris attacks and possible use of digital currencies for financing of terrorism, and even a ludicrous analogy between bitcoin and financial pyramids was drawn.
Nevertheless speakers have generally agreed that they have to better understand the subject matter of discussion before taking steps to ban or heavily regulate digital currencies and related
