Well, it seems that not only France, but any government, institution, media, corporation, declared war on the cryptocurrencies.
Two explanations:
1) they are scared and try to destroy cryptomarket
2) the want to profit, so they manipulate the market to make price fall to buy cheap.
We'll see.
Still some countries within the SEPA zone are not willing to agree with France and Germany about these over-the-top regulations: let's see how the G20 summit goes, but UK, Ireland, Cyprus, Malta all share a different vision. There won't be a consensus we can be sure about that. Too much money involved.
Its seems like we are not understanding this. I dont think this is in a way to stop or ban Bitcoin
despite their central bank governor once said that Bitcoin is no cryptocurrency and neither is it a national currency.
I believe what the France government is trying to do is find a way of preventing those who use cryptocurrencies as a way to dodge paying their taxes, and also to find a way of stopping those that uses Bitcoin as a way to carry out some criminal activities. So, I dont believe they are trying to ban Bitcoin, cause they never mentioned anything like banning.
No they won't ban bitcoin, I can guarantee France will not ban bitcoin because France (Macron) cares a LOT about their image, Macron wants France to look modern, friendly towards technology, etc. There won't be any ban. But believe me they will make everything possible to track every payments made with bitcoin, tax everything they can (as usual, nothing new here).
This will make bitcoin much less attractive than before.
I can even picture the following: French residents allowed to buy/sell only from exchange platforms owning a license in France. This is exactly what happened to sports betting companies back in 2010.