How and why Consob of Savona is beating on cryptocurrencies
Not just cryptocurrencies. What Consob president Paolo Savona said in his speech for the traditional annual meeting with the financial market
Speculation on cryptocurrency is now similar to that on subprime mortgages of 2008. International regulation is needed to stem it.
This was stated by Consob president Paolo Savona in his annual speech to the market.
According to what emerges from the report of the Commission that supervises the stock exchange and listed companies, the saving capacity of Italian families during the pandemic increased by 50%, but the yield was close to zero. Furthermore, said Savona, security "remains the open side" of the new digital finance and "it is therefore reasonable to consider cybersecurity a public good".
All the details on the speech of the Consob president for the annual meeting with the financial market.
CONTINUOUS MONITORING ON THE ITALIAN EXCHANGE IN EURONEXT
Consob will continuously monitor the impacts of Borsa spa's entry into the Euronext group . The president Savona underlined this, indicating the activities of the commission in these first months of the year. "The non-objection was issued for the transfer of the Borsa Italiana Group from the London Stock Exchange Group to the Euronext Group, which will be followed by continuous monitoring by Consob on operational impacts of the operation in implementation of the integration plan and industrial plan on a federal basis envisaged by the agreement between shareholders ".
EXPORT AND SAVINGS AGAINST THE CRISIS
Italy has withstood the weight of the crisis thanks to exports and savings and in these first months of 2021 "it shows its will to tackle the unresolved problems, also making use of the change in the tax policy attitude of the European Union".
AN IMPORTANT OPPORTUNITY IS THE REFORM OF THE TAX
According to Paolo Savona, president of Consob and economist, "for the continuation of the phase of relaunching production it is however necessary to integrate the decisions taken so far to incentivize the risk capital of companies in order to improve their financial leverage and make them more available. to undertake new initiatives. The tax reform urged for some time and reaffirmed in the framework of the National Recovery and Resilience Plan in implementation of the NGEU offers an important opportunity, if it is assigned the task of considering the productive demands on the same level as the ethical ones in the assessments of the distributive equity ".
NEW RULES FOR CRYPTOCURRENCIES
Cryptocurrencies have become a threat to the protection of savings and it is urgent to address them with new rules. The president of Consob Paolo Savona in the annual speech to the market raises the alarm but also offers the solution: change the institutional architecture, made up of regulations and bodies, today in charge of the protection of savings. Savona talks about the "river now full of virtual instruments" with the Internet that estimates from 4 to 5 thousand cryptocurrencies in circulation and "if the experience made in a short time by Consob in obscuring hundreds of websites that collected in Italy is applied illicitly saving, the resulting picture appears worrying ”.
BLOCKCHAIN OPACITY PROBLEM
The problem arises from the opacity of the technology that assists cryptocurrencies, the blockchain or decentralized accounting chain, which is impenetrable to supervisors.
START CONSULTATION BETWEEN GOVERNMENT BODIES AND INDEPENDENT AUTHORITIES
Savona therefore proposes to intervene in Italy with "structures of formal consultation between government bodies and independent authorities" to give a unitary direction to the choices in matters ".
Financial information technology is a prodigious lamp from which the Genius has emerged. The authorities will not be able to bring it back inside, because it acts in the immaterial sphere (or infosphere) that can only be controlled by changing the information exchange protocol ”.
TO AVOID MARKET CRISIS
Finally, the president of Consob warns that "if the regulation were limited to putting sand in the mechanism and, as is widely discussed, being satisfied by taxing the gains obtained, the consequence could be the continuation of their diffusion which could lead to a new crisis of market". This is why we must not waste time and “convergence of wills is required, overcoming fears and hesitations, towards an operational solution that does not suffer from too many compromises. The 'warnings' addressed to investors about the risks they run by operating in cryptocurrency are no longer enough. The time for reflections has now run out and we must move on to choices ".
THE FULL SPEECH BY CONSOB CHAIRMAN PAOLO SAVONA
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/economia/come-e-perche-savona-picchia-sulle-criptovalute/ on Mon, 14 Jun 2021 10:42:10 +0000.