Bitcoin: who would be the worst successor to Christine Lagarde at the ECB?

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Eurogroup President Kyriakos Pierrakakis confirmed on November 6 that Klaas Knot and Pablo Hernández de Cos were the only candidates to replace Christine Lagarde, who will leave the presidency of the European Central Bank (ECB) on February 7, 2027.

Euro zone finance ministers considered both applications on November 9, and European leaders hope to decide by the end of the year.

This choice will be closely followed by the crypto ecosystem. Christine Lagarde has never hidden her distrust of cryptocurrencies, which she considered worthless in 2022, and her successor will inherit two key issues for the sector: key rates, already raised twice this year, and the digital euro, the pilot phase of which is due to start in the second half of 2027.

The path of the two candidates, however, leaves little hope of an ECB more open to Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies.

Klaas Knot chaired the Dutch central bank from 2011 to 2025. Under his leadership, it established itself as one of Europe's strictest supervisors of the crypto ecosystem.

Binance was fined 3.325 million euros for serving Dutch customers without mandatory registration. Having never obtained it, the platform left the country in June 2023. Coinbase received the same fine in January 2023.

At the head of the Financial Stability Board (FSB), the G20 body responsible for monitoring global financial risks, Klaas Knot warned in June 2025 of a possible tipping point towards systemic risk. He pointed to the easier access offered by ETFs and the growing weight of stablecoins on the American debt market.

On the other hand, he clearly supports the digital euro, which he presents as a sovereign payment infrastructure in the face of the rise of private digital currencies.

Former governor of the Bank of Spain, Pablo Hernández de Cos has headed the Bank for International Settlements (BIS), nicknamed the bank of central banks, since 2025. From 2019 to 2024, he chaired the Basel Committee, which sets prudential rules for banks.

It was under his presidency that the global standard governing the holding of cryptocurrencies by banks was adopted in 2022. Banks must normally hold at least 8% of capital against their risky assets. For Bitcoin, the standard applies a risk weighting of 1,250%: €100 of bitcoin counts as €1,250 of risky assets, of which 8% represents €100.

A bank that holds €100 of Bitcoin must therefore set aside €100 of equity, as if it risked losing everything.

The text also asks banks to limit these exposures to 1% of their basic capital, under penalty of even harsher treatment beyond that.

Its priority target remains stablecoins. At Jackson Hole on August 28, he argued that they were not a credible means of payment at scale, and instead defended tokenized bank deposits.

Finally, he is more reserved than Christine Lagarde on the digital euro: in 2023, he believed that his show was not seen as a pressing need.

In our opinion, Pablo Hernández de Cos would be the most unfavorable to Bitcoin. The ECB directly supervises the major banks in the euro zone, precisely the ground where it has built its rules.

Klaas Knot has the harshest record towards crypto platforms, but their approval is the responsibility of national authorities, such as the Financial Markets Authority (AMF) in France, and not the ECB.

On the rate side, Klaas Knot is seen as the firmer of the two, while the ECB has already raised its rates twice this year. However, its influence would have limits: the rates are voted by the entire Governing Council, which brings together the leaders of the ECB and the national central banks of the euro zone, and not by the president alone.

Above all, the evolution of the price of Bitcoin is more sensitive to the decisions of the Federal Reserve (Fed), the American central bank.

Clément invested in Bitcoin in 2017 and has been following the evolution of the crypto ecosystem for 9 years. Having become publication director of Cryptoast, he strives to make these subjects accessible to as many people as possible through rigorous, educational and in-depth content. He has published more than 2,000 articles covering Bitcoin, other cryptocurrencies, exchange platforms, wallets, DeFi and the taxation of crypto-assets. He is co-author of the book Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, published by Editions Larousse, a reference work intended to popularize the mechanisms of blockchain and cryptoassets to the general French-speaking public. He also collaborated with the bank Delubac & Cie to produce educational sheets on cryptocurrencies. Thanks to a dedicated and passionate team, Cryptoast has become an essential reference in the French-speaking sector, providing in-depth analyzes and relevant information for all enthusiasts and curious people in the world of cryptocurrencies and blockchain.

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