Ms MaryRose McGovern:

That is okay because the real name was not used in the study. Anything we publish is anonymised. Cryptocurrency is a highly risky and volatile investment product. In saying that, I am very conscious that people who believe they are investing in cryptocurrency are probably not doing that but are rather investing in something that is in some way linked to the price of cryptocurrency. However, unless you have the key to Bitcoin or Ethereum, you do not really own cryptocurrency. When you are lured onto one of these sites and encouraged to invest in these online platforms, you may be given the option to invest in what are really contracts for difference or it may turn out that the platform is fraudulent and induces you to start trading with, perhaps, $200 or €250. You can then feel quite empowered by the results the fraudulent website leads to you to believe you are achieving.

Philippa, the subject of one of the other case studies we included in our recent publication, actually received money into her account on foot of trades she believed she was entering into. It was on the strength of this that she began to have faith in the process and ultimately borrowed quite a large amount of money, which was not as much as the investment manager had been encouraging her to borrow but was still €20,000, and placed it in what she believed to be a cryptocurrency investment. When the whole thing crumbled away, there was nothing there and the money was gone. There was nothing behind all of the lovely visuals she was seeing on her screen. There was no substance. It is probably a good thing that a bank does not permit the purchase of cryptocurrency with a credit card because it is a high-risk purchase and declining a transaction of that nature and asking people whether they are sure they want to do that is probably a good thing for a bank to do.

With regard to the particular case study the Chairman has talked about, the parties themselves agreed to a resolution within the mediation space. The details of that are confidential but I suspect the reason a settlement was achievable was that the bank in some way recognised the loan should not have been made available.