The Bank of Spain today published a report on the use of cryptocurrencies in the country. This in order to offer more information to contribute to its regulation, since it considers that its adoption can improve the efficiency of the financial system if its risks are mitigated.
The organism revealed what Spain has been the fifth place in Europe with the highest volume of cryptoactive transactions with close to 60 billion euros during 2021. In this way, it is behind the United Kingdom, France, Germany and the Netherlands, and ahead of Switzerland and Italy.
The study estimates that 10% of cryptocurrency transactions made in euros were made in Spain, a proportion that is similar to the size of the economy of this country in the European region. Regarding the type of exchange platform, he warns that decentralized services had a greater weight with 64% in Spain and 53% in other places. The remaining percentage was performed at centralized sites.
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Spain prefers Bitcoin and Ethereum
The investigation of the Bank of Spain maintains that more than 60% of cryptocurrency transactions made in the country have been in Bitcoin (BTC) and Ethereum (ETH) in the last year, while 25% in stablecoins. The rest were from other currencies with high price volatility.
On this, he clarified that only 1% of these involve illegal activities, which he understands as a minimum proportion. Something that warns that it happens mainly due to scams (57.6%) and theft of funds (31.8%).
He also indicated that, according to the annual Finder study, done in 27 countries, the 12% of adults in Spain own crypto assets. Mainly young people between 18 and 24 years old. Along the same lines, he pointed out that a Statista survey shows that 10% of those surveyed in Spain affirm that they use or possess these assets. “These adoption percentages are close to and in some cases higher than those observed in such surveys for other developed countries,” he said.
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Cryptocurrencies serve to regulate the value against inflation, says Bank of Spain
The Bank of Spain declared that, in emerging countries, crypto assets can allow residents to access a store of value that protects them to a greater extent from local inflation.
“This would have important implications for capital flows and, furthermore, would reduce the effectiveness of both monetary and macroprudential policy, leaving these countries more exposed to the global financial cycle,” he estimated.
This panorama is something that not only applies to citizens of unstable economies such as Latin America. CriptoNoticias reported that the same Spaniards assure that they use bitcoin as a savings or investment to counteract the effects of inflation in the country, which is currently the highest in more than 35 years. The last registered interannual index was 9.8%, according to DatosMacro.
“Crypto asset technology can potentially improve the efficiency and resilience of the financial system either through lower transaction costs, greater interoperability in the payment system or greater competition between the different actors. However, these benefits can only be obtained if their development is carried out safely and is accompanied by regulatory frameworks that mitigate risks and maintain confidence in the financial system”.
Bank of Spain
In this way, the Banco de España shows a positive narrative change for the cryptocurrency ecosystem, despite the fact that for years he has criticized it. Now, on the other hand, she perceives herself interested in the advantages that this monetary system promotes and seeks to establish its regulation in the country.
Europe uses more cryptocurrencies than North America
The Bank of Spain reported that Europe is the main region receiving crypto assets on a global scale. Its transaction volume was around 845 billion euros during the past year. A figure that represents 25% of the world total, ahead of North America that has 18%, thus being its largest counterpart.
According to data from Chainalysis, it warns that the volume of transactions with crypto assets during the first half of 2021 was more than ten times the amount negotiated during the same period of 2020. This increase would respond to the greater number of transactions and the revaluation of the major cryptocurrencies, such as bitcoin, as well as the largest available supply of stablecoins, such as USDT, he estimated.
The Bank of Spain also mentioned that institutional investors gained prominence in the use of cryptocurrencies during the last year. This is because he sees a greater importance of transactions of more than 10 million US dollars.