The chief banker of South Africa remarked that cryptocurrencies are closer to assets than real money.
South African Reserve Bank’s governor Lesetja Kganyago has claimed that crypto is not classified as currency.
According to a MoneyWeb storey, in an interactive session at the Wits Business School Leadership Dialogues, the head of the central bank equated cryptographic assets rather than cash.
Cryptocurrencies only fulfil two of the three foreign-exchange criteria, according to the governor of South Africa’s Core Bank:
“A cryptocurrency is a store of value. It is a medium of exchange, but is not generally accepted. It’s only accepted by those who are participating in it.”
The words of Kganyago are a frequent complaint thrown at Bitcoin (BTC) and cryptocurrencies by central bankers and other actors in the traditional financial system.
However, crypto gains more popularity, particularly in retail areas, as a mode of payment. El Salvador has also recently been the first country to make a bid to Bitcoin, which might be copied by other countries in Central America.
In view of the rising acceptance of cryptocurrencies, onboarding payment networks such as Visa and Mastercards are also possible for cryptopayments.
Connected: Fresh Investment Warning from South African Regulators
Commenting on the mission to protect investors from SARB cryptographing, Kganyago noted that the central bank aims to regulate cryptographer markets. Crypto companies in the country have already cautioned that the local cryptomonetary industry is being hit by the absence of clear laws.
Indeed, the cryptocurrency market in Southern Africa has been full of various bogus investments that have drained millions of dollars from unwary casualties.
By July, AfriCrypt, a South African cryptography operator, purportedly retreated from the company’s coffers after Bitcoin had disappeared by $3.6 billion. The United States Federal Bureau of Investigation has taken part in this test with the international attention of Mirror Trading International, another well-known crypto-Ponzi scheme.
The central bank was also interested in blockchain and SARB was experimenting with the latest technologies, Kganyago disclosed. The preliminary investigation by SARB on a prospective retail central bank digital currency began in May, as Cointelegraph had previously reported.
