The Bank of Israel said Saturday that cryptocurrencies “cannot serve as a means to circumvent sanctions,” a day after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he had asked for a plan involving blockchain to prepare for possible sanctions, including banking sanctions.
The statement, quoted in translation from Hebrew by Globes, the Times of Israel and Ynet, went on: “The right course for the Israeli economy is to maintain economic relations with our primary trading partners and to focus on preventing sanctions and their negative impact on the economy. This is the responsibility of the political leadership, and it should act upon it.” The Times of Israel rendered the opening line as crypto “cannot be used as a route for bypassing sanctions.”
As of Saturday afternoon ET, the statement did not appear on the press release page of the bank’s English-language website.
Netanyahu made the remarks in an interview with Roy Katz broadcast Friday, Oct. 23, on Channel 10, Israel’s economic news channel. “We need to understand that there could be sanctions, including banking sanctions. You need to prepare an economy that can bypass them,” he said, according to a translation by The Block. “I’m working on that too.” Asked whether blockchain was the alternative, he answered, “One of them, certainly. And I have already requested that a plan for this should be prepared,” in Globes’ translation.
He did not say which countries might impose such sanctions, who would draw up the plan, which networks or currencies it might use, or when. Ynet reported that officials in Israel’s economic ministries and the Prime Minister’s Office said they knew of no such plan. A senior economic official told Channel 12 that “the idea will certainly not achieve its goal. Even talking about it could harm the economy,” the Times of Israel reported. Separately, 109 senior economists, business executives and former public officials, writing as the Economists’ Forum, said in a joint statement that they felt “grave concern and anxiety” over the remarks, the Times of Israel reported.
The remarks followed sanctions announced by Britain and 11 other Western countries on goods from Israeli settlements in the West Bank, the Times of Israel reported. Israelis vote in a general election on Oct. 27.
Speaking to Channel 14 on Saturday evening, Netanyahu did not withdraw the idea. “We have other means; crypto is one of them — it is not the sole method, and it is not certain that it will actually be used,” he said, according to Globes. “I thank the Bank of Israel for their advice, but I do what I think is right.”
Sources: Globes, The Times of Israel, Ynet, The Times of Israel (Economists’ Forum), The Block