Former secretary of state and failed 2016 Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton said Thursday during a panel at the Bloomberg New Economy Forum in Singapore that cryptocurrencies could “destabilize” nations.
Discussing Russian President Vladimir Putin, Clinton said, “He has a very large stable of hackers and those who deal in disinformation and cyber warfare both in and outside the government. He is engaged in a lot of asymmetric power moves. I think one of the areas nation-states have got to pay greater attention to the rise of asymmetric power centers.”
Hillary Clinton continued, “One more area that I hope nation-states start paying greater attention to is the rise of cryptocurrency. Because what looks like a very interesting and somewhat exotic effort to literally mine new coins in order to trade with them has the potential for undermining currencies, undermining the role of the dollar as the reserve currency, for destabilizing nations, perhaps starting with small ones, but going much larger. So when we think about this new environment that we find ourselves in that we have been discussing, we can’t just think about nation-states. Putin is a great example of that with his oligarchic coterie he has utilized many non-state actors to personal as well as nationalistic goals, and I think that’s going to become a greater and greater threat.”
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