Bitcoin under control?

Only through regulation would speculative pressure be avoided and the limits of its use set

Sebastián Albella, president of the CNMV

The price of bitcoin, the best known virtual currency, seems to have entered a convulsive period that increases the alarm about a hypothetical explosion of the virtual bubble. In January, its value has fallen almost 50%, the most serious monthly decline in digital assets, not only because of its volatility - inherent in its price since it was created - but also because Bitfinex, a platform that has boosted the growth of bitcoin value, has been cited to testify in the Commodity Futures Trading Commission of Wall Street, probably to investigate if the price of the currency was inflated artificially.

It is time to move from warnings to regulation. Although many financial regulators have warned about the volatile and unintelligible nature (for the bulk of investors) of bitcoin, despite the fact that the European Securities and Markets Authority has expressed alarm over the speculative explosion of the virtual currency, Demand is skyrocketing and some businesses even want to finance their expansion with bitcoins. The president of the CNMV, Sebastián Albella, has suggested the urgency of regulating the bitcoins; There are reasons for this. A regulation would control the speculative pressure (presumably attributed to Bitfinex) on the currency and limit its possible uses, because it is evident that the current system and its guarantee regulation requires that some delicate operations (such as expansion or expansion in international markets) ) can only be done in terms of conventional financing.

It is debatable whether investors who have been warned insistently about the uncontrolled nature of bitcoin are entitled to protection beyond warnings. But the safest way is to regulate in a coordinated way the virtual currencies: impose the supply of information, demand a cadre of responsible and submit the decisions of the miners to the regulator.