From calling BTC highly speculative to ruling it out of central-bank reserves, her position on the asset remained consistently negative.
European Central Bank President Christine Lagarde announced earlier this week that she will step down on February 7, 2027, about eight months before her term is scheduled to end.
The former IMF chief has led the ECB since November 2019, a period during which she became one of the most prominent critics of Bitcoin and crypto among global central bankers.
Worth Nothing
Her hostility toward BTC and the broader market dates back to January 2021. At the time, she spoke at the Reuters Next conference and described the largest cryptocurrency as a “highly speculative asset” and accused it of facilitating funny business as well as money laundering, even though we know that the public blockchain allows everyone to trace each transaction. Unlike banks.
She also argued that regulation had to be coordinated globally because such loopholes would inevitably be exploited. One of her strongest statements came in 2022 when she said crypto assets were “worth nothing” and were “based on nothing.” She claimed that there was no underlying asset or structure providing an anchor of safety. She also warned that inexperienced investors could suffer major losses and contrasted private cryptocurrencies with a future digital euro backed by the ECB.
There was some irony to this, though. Lagarde revealed that one of her sons had invested in crypto despite her multiple warnings. By late 2023, she said he had lost around 60% of his investment, prompting him to “reluctantly” concede that she had been right.
Her stance remained strongly against BTC even as its institutional adoption accelerated over the past few years.
No Bitcoin Reserves
Rewinding the clock to 2021, Lagarde asserted that the prospects of central banks holding Bitcoin were “out of the question” and rejected the idea that the asset constituted a genuine currency. That position became particularly relevant in January 2025, when Czech National Bank Governor Ales Michl floated the possibility of studying Bitcoin as part of the country’s reserves.
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Lagarde responded that reserve assets needed to be liquid, secure, and safe, while avoiding money-laundering concerns. She said she was confident that Bitcoin would not enter the reserves of any central bank represented on the ECB’s General Council.
Even in a 2026 interview with The Wall Street Journal, her view remained largely the same. Although she praised distributed ledger technology as innovative, she drew a sharp distinction between the tech and cryptocurrencies, describing the actual assets as speculative. Once again, she said they are worth nothing.
All of her views have remained anti-Bitcoin, so perhaps, just perhaps, her departure could be good news for the industry.
