Governments are going to regulate cryptocurrencies “no matter what”, according to Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak.

Speaking at Mastercard’s “Connecting Tomorrow” event in Barcelona, Wozniak compared the current stage of development of cryptocurrencies and other blockchain applications to “the early days of the Internet.”

“It is not going to go very fast,” he said. “In those early days of the Internet, people started talking about apps that would let you book your airplane flight, apps that make reservations, do everything in your life. But it didn’t happen very fast and there was a huge crash. The bubble burst.”

“But all these Internet promises became part of our life, eventually,” he added.

In his remarks, Wozniak said he considered cryptocurrencies – which lack any type of centralised control – as a “type of freedom”.

“They [freedoms] will always get taken away,” he said. “I love it. I want it. I want that world to exist. But there will be obstacles.”

Wozniak added that he believes cryptocurrency is “a little too anonymous.”

“It’s a little too hard to track down who is doing what transactions, and a great part of our life and existence is knowing what transactions are there so governments can tax them,” he said. “Governments are going to regulate that, no matter what.”