Bitcoin Isn't a Currency, According to Sweden's Central Bank
While the central bank clarifies each point in the tweets, it eventually concludes that Bitcoin and other cryptos are assets rather than currencies.
According to Sweden's central bank, Bitcoin fails as a "value preserver" due to its excessive price volatility. According to the bank, users of a currency should have confidence that the item they are about to purchase will remain essentially price stable over time. The bank also questions Bitcoin's legitimacy as a payment method, claiming that there is "no specific statistic on how many enterprises accept Bitcoin" as payment. The bank uses Coinmap's global directory of Bitcoin ATMs — roughly 29,500 — as a proxy for Visa, which is accepted by over 60 million retailers worldwide. According to the Riksbank, Bitcoin also fails as a unit of account due to its incapacity to serve as a store of value or a means of payment. The central bank also points out that countries price products in their currency, not Bitcoin.
"Bitcoin generally does not satisfy the three purposes and is thus not money, at least not in that it acts as money in the traditional financial system and society," the bank writes at the end of its argument.
The tweet also applies the same logic to other cryptocurrencies, such as Ethereum.