San Francisco Fed President Daly stated that cryptocurrencies should be viewed as an independent asset class rather than being mixed up with gold as is often the case, and that cryptocurrencies are complex and not yet ready to be considered 'currency.'
I think cryptocurrency is a complex thing, and the service we need to provide for everyone is to truly interpret what it means. Once we do that, we can define it,” Daly said on the podcast. “It can be a currency, a medium of exchange, or a stock—an asset that retains value or sometimes depreciates. We just need to define these terms. “So I don’t think it’s like gold,” Daly added. “It has some characteristics similar to gold at times, but I don’t think it is an asset like gold.”
Daly's comments differ slightly from those of Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell, whose remarks about Bitcoin earlier this month energized the cryptocurrency community.