The Bank for International Settlements’ (BIS) push to isolate crypto markets and its controversial recommendations on DeFi and stablecoins is “dangerous” for the entire financial system, warns the head of a blockchain investment firm.
“Many of their recommendations and conclusions — perhaps due to a mix of fear, arrogance, or ignorance — are completely uninformed and, frankly, dangerous,” CoinFund president Christopher Perkins said in an April 19 X post, referring to the BIS’ April 15 report titled “Cryptocurrencies and Decentralized Finance: Functions and Financial Stability Implications.”
BIS recommendations exposes TradFi to risks of “unimaginable scale”
“Crypto is not communism,” Perkins said, pushing back against the BIS’ call for a “containment” approach to isolate crypto from traditional finance and the broader economy.
“It’s the new internet that provides anyone with a connection access to financial services,” Perkins said. “You cannot control it anymore than you control the internet,” he added.
Perkins warned that a containment approach to crypto would expose the traditional financial system to massive liquidity risks “of unimaginable scale,” especially when the crypto market operates in real-time, 24/7, while traditional financial markets shuts down after trading hours.
“If implemented they will cause–not mitigate–the systemic risk they seek to prevent.”
The report warned that the number of investors and amount of capital in crypto and DeFi have “reached a critical mass,” with investor protection becoming a “significant concern for regulators.”
Perkins pushed back against the BIS’ claim that DeFi presents significant challenges, arguing instead that it represents a “significant improvement” over the “opacity” and imbalances of the traditional financial system.
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Responding to the BIS’s concern about the anonymity of DeFi developers, Perkins questioned its relevance:
“Sorry, but when was the last time a TradFi company published a list of its developers? Sure, public companies provide a degree of disclosures and transparency, but they seem to be dying off in favor of private markets.”
Perkins also critiqued the BIS’s concern around stablecoins that it could lead to “macroeconomic instability in countries like Venezuela and Zimbabwe.”
“If there is demand for USD stablecoins and it helps improve the condition of anyone in the developing world, perhaps that is a good thing,” Perkins said.
Perkins wasn’t alone in criticizing the controversial report. Lightspark co-founder Christian Catalini also weighed in, posting a series of critiques on X that same day. Catalini summed up the report with the analogy:
“Think: writing parking regulations for a fleet of self‑driving drones — earnest work, two technological leaps behind.”
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