This is not the first time the International Monetary Fund has commented on what is happening in the digital asset industry. In particular, in September 2021, IMF officials criticized the adoption of Bitcoin in El Salvador. At the time, they said that "privately issued crypto-assets" like BTC were risky. Accordingly, the recognition of such an asset as official tender would allegedly necessarily lead to negative consequences. Read more about the experts' comments in a separate article.

Also in the autumn of 2020, IMF officials commented on the topic of banking digital currencies. Then they believed that such a product would provide better control over the monetary policy of the country.

Now, the organization’s comments are not happy at all.

What the IMF says about cryptocurrencies

To avoid potential future problems and limit potential risks to other markets, the IMF is proposing to create “global standards for crypto-assets”. Coherence among global financial regulators is expected to benefit cryptocurrencies.

Notably, the report looks at the issue of crypto regulation in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic’s impact on the global economy. Here is a quote from the publication cited in the Decrypt news article.

The rapid growth of the cryptocurrency ecosystem has been accompanied by the emergence of new organisations, some of which have weak operating systems, poor risk management and corporate structure.

Growth in cryptocurrency market capitalisation over the past couple of months

In this context, analysts refer to the crypto industry’s dependence on many well-known centralised exchanges and cryptocurrencies. Most of them are opaque, which makes it seriously difficult to have a normal dialogue with financial regulators about oversight of internal processes.

More specifically, regulators from many countries around the world do not like the fact that the largest cryptocurrency exchange, Binance, does not have a head office. Also, some of them have repeatedly stated that Bitcoin’s image and price are overly dependent on USDT Tether, the issuer of Stablecoin. Recall that in the past, scandals surrounding this company have repeatedly caused another collapse in the price of BTC.

Crypto is unstoppable

The IMF has the same claim against Tether, with analysts criticizing the structure of tokens’ collateralization with debentures rather than national currencies. The recent collapse of the Chinese holding company Evergrande showed that securities of this kind can depreciate quickly, and that is the main risk of the existence of stabelcoins.

Moreover, the IMF has pointed out that “the ecosystems of some steiblocoins could fall victim to collapse altogether”. An example was given of IRON, whose algorithmic ecosystem collapsed in June this year, leaving token holders empty-handed. As you can see, analysts remain sceptical so far, but fortunately avoid making harsh pronouncements towards Bitcoin. In other words, there will be no total bans on crypto in the near future.

A similar position was voiced by representatives of the Russian government. In particular, according to Deputy Finance Minister Alexey Moiseyev, citizens will continue to be able to buy crypto assets on foreign exchanges. However, settlements in digital assets in Russia are still prohibited – and will remain so in the future.


We find it amusing that IMF officials care so much about what is happening in the digital asset niche. Moreover, this is happening against a backdrop of massive inflation and price increases around the world, which in principle is supposedly considered to be a normal situation. At the same time, Bitcoin's mass supply is limited to 21 million coins, while Etherium is set to become a deflationary asset altogether because of the coin-burning mechanism - and that's much better than what's happening with conventional currencies.


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