‘He ignored me royally’: ECB chief admits her son lost cash invested in crypto

Anyone would be forgiven to assume the family of chief of one world’s most powerful bank would have their finances in tip-top shape. After all, when truly world-class financial advice is freely available right in your house, what’s the chance that you’ll lose money? It appears there’s a fat chance. European Central Bank President Christine Lagarde has admitted that her own son lost “almost all” of his money due to investment in cryptocurrency. And she did try to advice him before he lost the big bucks.

“He ignored me royally, which is his privilege,” Lagarde told a town hall with students in Frankfurt. “And he lost almost all the money that he had invested.”

“It wasn’t a lot but he lost it all, he lost about 60% of it,” Lagarde added. “So when I then had another talk with him about it, he reluctantly accepted that I was right.”

Lagarde has two sons who are in their mid-30s. The ECB chief did not say which one lost the money.

She has for long spoken against cryptocurrency saying they are speculative and worthless and worse, a tool often used by criminal to fund their unlawful activities.

The ECB has suggested that there should be global regulation of assets held in cryptocurrencies in order to protect customers who don’t know about the risk and also to close a loophole that lets terrorists channel funding or money launderers to launder cash.

There are worries that currencies issued privately may potentially displace currencies issued by governments. The ECB has launched a digital euro project but there will be a few years before any digital money is issued.

In October, the ECB began “preparatory phase” for digital euro but it added that it would need two more years before it decide if it will roll it out or not.

“I have, as you can tell, a very low opinion of cryptos,” Lagarde said. “People are free to invest their money where they want, people are free to speculate as much as they want, (but) people should not be free to participate in criminally sanctioned trade and businesses.”

(With inputs from agencies)