European Central Bank President Christine Lagarde announced she will step down on February 7, 2027, approximately eight months before her term concludes. During her tenure leading the ECB since November 2019, she emerged as one of the most vocal critics of Bitcoin and cryptocurrency among global central bankers.
Lagarde's skepticism toward Bitcoin dates to January 2021, when she spoke at the Reuters Next conference and described the largest cryptocurrency as a highly speculative asset. She argued that it facilitated money laundering and that regulation required global coordination to prevent exploitation of regulatory gaps.
Her criticism intensified in 2022 when she stated that crypto assets were worth nothing and based on nothing, claiming no underlying asset or structure provided safety anchors. She warned that inexperienced investors faced major losses and contrasted private cryptocurrencies with a future digital euro backed by the ECB.
Regarding central bank reserves, Lagarde asserted in 2021 that the prospect of central banks holding Bitcoin was out of the question. She rejected the notion that Bitcoin constituted a genuine currency. When Czech National Bank Governor Ales Michl raised the possibility of studying Bitcoin for reserves in January 2025, Lagarde reiterated that reserve assets must be liquid, secure, and safe while avoiding money-laundering concerns. She expressed confidence Bitcoin would not enter the reserves of any central bank represented on the ECB's General Council.
Even in a 2026 Wall Street Journal interview, Lagarde maintained her position. While she acknowledged distributed ledger technology as innovative, she distinguished between the technology and cryptocurrencies themselves, describing assets as speculative and reiterating they hold no value.
Lagarde revealed that one of her sons invested in crypto despite her warnings, losing approximately 60 percent of his investment by late 2023, leading him to concede she had been correct.
