Monzo poised to press on with crypto plans

Monzo is likely to press ahead with its crypto investment plans despite the current crash in the market, its co-founder said today.

Speaking at Financial Times Live event, Jonas Templestein, co-founder of the London-headquartered challenger bank, said that the recent crash in the crypto market “probably…hasn’t affected our plans” and the firm would continue to explore digital currencies and their underlying technology.

“I think undoubtedly we have seen if you have economies with unstable currency and having an easily tradable digital store of value has been instrumental for many people,” he said.

“I think from a technology perspective, blockchain technology is super interesting database technology. If you go a little bit further with your imagination, you can think it’s a very interesting distributed virtual machine a way to run sort of like common computing”

Templestein warned of the need for regulation in the sector, however, saying that a lack of oversight had caused “suffering” among unsophisticated consumers.

“It seems now that building an entire financial industry, without any regulators, is not such a great idea,” Templestein added.

“It’s especially not a great idea for the unsophisticated consumers, that by and large, I think have been suffering the last few years.”

Templestein’s comments come after hundreds of billions has been wiped off the value of cryptocurrencies in recent weeks, causing top firms to slash jobs and batten down the hatches for a coming “crypto winter”.

Coinbase chief executive Brian Armstrong, who revealed the firm would slash 18 per cent of its workforce this week, said “a recession could lead to another crypto winter, and could last for an extended period.”