ECB Reports Record Loss for 2023, Publishes Another Hit Piece on Bitcoin

• "The loss... reflects the role and necessary policy actions of the Eurosystem in fulfilling its primary mandate of maintaining price stability and has no impact on its ability to conduct effective monetary policy," the ECB said.
• "The ECB, the central bank for the 20-nation euro area said its loss before the release of provisions was 7.9 billion euros after a loss of 1.6 billion euros in 2022."

"The ECB is likely to incur further losses over the next few years as a result of the materialisation of interest rate risk, before returning to making sustained profits. The ECB can operate effectively and fulfil its primary mandate of maintaining price stability regardless of any losses," the bank added."

• The bank also decided to demonstrate its expertise on Bitcoin today, and published a blog post titled "ETF approval for bitcoin – the naked emperor’s new clothes.'

"Bitcoin has failed on the promise to be a global decentralised digital currency and is still hardly used for legitimate transfers. The latest approval of an ETF doesn’t change the fact that Bitcoin is not suitable as means of payment or as an investment," the blog post reads.

• In the post, ECB 'experts' share their findings on how they find bitcoin transactions slow and inconvenient, bitcoin itself is not suitable for investing, and, in their view, wastes lots of electricity. The post also makes unsubstantiated claims about bitcoin price manipulation and even goes to say that it is a currency for 'financing evil,' while also attributing the recent bitcoin price rise to the usual 'speculative bubble' narrative.
• The central bank experts also shared their findings on Bitcoin's governance structure.

"The Bitcoin network has a governance structure in which roles are assigned to identified individuals. Authorities could decide that these should be prosecuted in view of the large scale of illegal payments using Bitcoin," wrote the central bankers.

• "It is important for authorities to be vigilant and protect society from money laundering, cyber and other crimes, financial losses for the financially less educated, and extensive environmental damage. This job has not been done yet," was stated in the blog post.

Reuters Article / Archive
ECB Financial Statements 2023 / Archive
ECB on Bitcoin / Archive