As financial institutions across the globe attempt to regulate and integrate the cryptocurrency business into their operations, a central bank official from one country has been accused of disseminating detrimental falsehoods about the new asset class.
In particular, the allegations made by Kuben Naidoo, the deputy governor of the South African Reserve Bank (SARB), that “90 percent of bitcoin transactions” are utilised for unlawful reasons were extensively criticised by Steven Boykey Sidley, a professor and author at a South African institution.
Sidley slammed Naidoo for being “woefully uneducated on this issue,” referring to his views as “claptrap,” “poppycock,” and “balderdash” and accusing him of spreading “the worst disinformation that shows up in news headlines and does incalculable harm to an essential new industry.”
The proper information
The author cites a research by Chainalysis, an analytics software “used by the FBI and forensic and oversight and regulatory organisations throughout the globe,” to claim that just 0.15 percent of crypto transactions are engaged in illicit activity.
In addition, he emphasised that the benefit of blockchain transactions is that they are public, which is why:
“A crime cannot be committed in silence. It is instantaneously observable, and anybody can easily trace the profits of crypto-crime. In the domain of “fiat money” — the physical reality in which the majority of us reside — it is often simple to conceal financial wrongdoing.
As an example, he cited the results that continue to emerge “in shady financial havens like Panama,” alluding to the millions of leaked papers containing financial data on hundreds of thousands of offshore businesses that have been released since 2016 and called the Panama Papers.
Also Read: U.S. Senators Want CFTC Authority Over Crypto Regulation
Wallets