Fabio Panetta, a Member of the Executive Board of the European Central Bank (ECB) has argued in favor of regulation that recognizes “the speculative nature of unbacked cryptos and treat them as gambling activities.”

“As a form of investment, unbacked cryptos lack any intrinsic value, too. They are speculative assets. Investors buy them with the sole objective of selling them on at a higher price,” the ECB executive explained.

Meanwhile, Panetta noted that the European Union’s Regulation on Markets in Crypto-Assets (MiCA) “is an important step” towards cryptocurrency regulation. He, however, called for more efforts to regulate other segments of the cryptocurrency industry such as decentralized finance.