Investing.com – Cryptocurrencies’ price fell on Tuesday as a report by the Switzerland-based Bank for International Settlements (BIS) said digital coins remain far too risky to be used as legal tender any time soon.
Bitcoin was trading at $9,243.2 by 11:38pm ET on the Bitfinex exchange, down 1.8% over the previous 24 hours.
Ethereum, the world’s second largest cryptocurrency by market cap, was down 1.1% at $704.56 on the Bitfinex exchange.
Ripple’s XRP token slipped 1.6% to $0.78460 on the Poloniex exchange.
Meanwhile, Litecoin was trading 3.5% lower at $178.48.
BIS’s report on Monday gathered attention as it said digital coins could potentially be issued by policy makers for tasks including settling payments among financial institutions in the future, but at the same time such virtual currencies might destablize traditional lenders, and that central banks must study the risk and rewards on such new form of money.
The BIS also highlighted that digital currencies could fall victim to illegalities, either as a direct target or a means of transaction.
“General-purpose central-bank digital currencies could revolutionize the way money is provided and the role of central banks in the financial system, but these are uncharted waters,” said Benoit Coeure, a European Central Bank board member who chairs the BIS Committee on Payments and Market Infrastructures.
Coeure added that a lot more experiments and experience are required before central banks could even consider issuing their own digital currencies, generally known as CBDCs.
The BIS then concluded although digital currencies and their underlying technologies have the potential to make settlement of securities and derivatives transactions more efficient, the proposals so far look too similar and not clearly superior to the existing ones.