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The Bank of International Settlements (BIS) is now in full throttle bitcoin/crypto trash talk mode, a stark departure from it’s usual wonkish central bank think-tank self.

Last month they released an in-depth piece fear-mongering that cryptocurrencies would “break the internet” if universally adopted. Grizzle thoroughly debunked their sensational claims. If the internet didn’t break with Netflix it sure as hell won’t break with crypto.

The BIS is at it again this time with a phony fireside chat interview with Agustin Carstens, the General Manager of the BIS, empathetically titled: “My message to young people: stop trying to create money”.

If you’re a parent and you’re just talking to your kids about drugs and condoms — you’re clearly not doing enough!

Carstens wants kids to know that crypto=ponzi (unlike central banking)!

…if you look at them closely, cryptocurrencies are, in a nutshell, a bubble, a Ponzi scheme and an environmental disaster – the latter because of the high energy consumption needed to run the infrastructure for these cryptocurrencies.
His messaging is about as tone deaf to a millennial generation as you’d expect from someone who heads the central bank for all other central banks:

Central banks are trusted, and that trust is something they have built up over decades and for which there is no substitute right now. Trust is a valuable commodity. It is easily destroyed, but winning it takes time. Money has become established. Young people should use their many talents and skills for innovation, not reinventing money. It’s a fallacy to think money can be created from nothing.

The cookie monster in him couldn’t help himself from laying it down in no uncertain terms:

My message to young people would be: Stop trying to create money!
So in a nutshell Carsten’s message to the youth is to screw off already with this cryptocurrency nonsense and just accept our trusted and environmentally safe fiat currencies.

It’s abundantly clear the BIS is still employing a fossilized PR strategist from the Nancy Reagan “Just say No to Drugs” era. The BIS anti-crypto campaign will undoubtedly fail as spectacularly as the Drug Abuse Resistance Education (D.A.R.E.) program did in the ’80s (teens were just as likely or more likely  to use drugs after the ‘education’).

Grizzle now patiently awaits for the BIS anti-crypto video educational series (hopefully produced in the same engaging format as their annual report review)!

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Thomas George

Thomas has over 17 years of global institutional investment management experience. At TD Asset Management he was Director of Global Resources and lead Portfolio Manager for over $1 billion of global equities (resource and sustainability funds). Thomas is a CFA charterholder and has been featured on Fox Business, CNBC, Bloomberg, CTV, CBC and the National Post.

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