Sheila Bair, a former president of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) of the United States, gave an interview for CNBC’s “Fast Money” where she said the authorities have no intention of banning bitcoin as an asset, but there is a need for additional regulations towards the most popular cryptocurrency in the world.
The new statements are in line with Bair’s previous statement communicated on Yahoo in December last year, when she said there should be more regulations and no ban of bitcoin.
In the aforementioned interview for “Fast Money”, Bair repeated that, despite the fact that the authorities are not banning assets, the regulation of the cryptocurrency market is necessary to prevent money laundering operations and decrease the potential for market manipulation.
The former president of the FDIC looks positively on the bitcoin futures. She said: “I think the fact that CME and CBOE groups launched futures based on bitcoin is very important, because they would allow the regulatory authorities to gather more reports regarding important transfers in the Bitcoin network. This would allow the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) to get certain information that would prove the market is not manipulated.”
When it comes to bitcoin, Bair is concerned that the public could be attracted by the promises of high gains and the people could start investing in bitcoin and other digital currencies without clearly understanding what they really are. She added: “I think there is an enormous confusion between bitcoin and the blockchain technology.”
The former president of the FDIC is currently a board member of Paxos, a fintech company operating in the blockchain technology sector. In the interview for CNBC she said she did not own any bitcoins.
