The gendarme of european markets, warns against bitcoin (Photo KAREN BLEIER. AFP)
The european securities supervisory markets authority (ESMA) has warned Monday on the risks associated with levees in cryptomonnaies, insisting on the instability of this type of currency, as illustrated in recent days by the iconic bitcoin.
During these operations in full swing, so-called “Initial Corner Offerings (ICO), a term modeled on the SOPS used in English for the introductions on the stock Exchange), a group creates its own virtual currency and raising funds by selling to investors.
“ESMA has observed a rapid growth of the ICO in the world like in Europe, and fears that investors are not aware of the high risk they take,” said the regulator in a press release.
ESMA warns european investors that they might be deprived of recourse in case of disputes, because many of the ICO, which operate via the technology fully decentralized “blockchain”, “do not fall within the scope of applications of laws and european regulation”.
Especially, the controller recalls that, like any virtual currency, the currency created by the enterprise risk to be “extremely volatile”.
The warning of the ESMA is published at a time when the bitcoin virtual currency the most emblematic, is experiencing strong shaking.
On Monday, he is down to 5.605 million dollars, or a decline of almost 30% from a record-beating the 8 November. To 10.20 AM GMT, it rose to 6.425 dollars.
The bitcoin suffers the competition of a rival, the “bitcoin cash”, created this summer at the initiative of a minority share of the community of its users and “miners”.
