The success of bitcoin as a medium of exchange poses a problem for the traditional Austrian view on the emergence of money. In particular, it casts doubt on the regression theorem of Ludwig von Mises, which implies that an item cannot gain acceptance as a medium of exchange without government...

Placing bank and fiat money off balance sheet, using the distributed transaction technologies of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, avoids the need for centralised payment settlement (in central bank money). Just like earlier proposals for ‘narrow-banking' or 100-percent reserving this...

The governance of the fiat money system via democratically elected government and financial institutions aims to ensure that all can transact fairly and safely with confidence in the stability and viability of that system in an equitable manner for all citizens. Rawls (1971) suggested that the...

Digital currencies have attracted strong interest in recent years and have the potential to become widely adopted for use in making payments. Public authorities and central banks around the world are closely monitoring developments in digital currencies and studying their implications for the...

Private cryptocurrencies allow for payments without the need for a financial institution. These institutions, the central bank and retail banks, may thus observe a decline in the demand for their payments systems, i.e. cash and deposits. Using the monetary search model of Lagos and Wright...

We examine the economic consequences of an interest-bearing design of the Central-Bank Digital Currency (CBDC), and extend the discussion to an open-economy context with trade and capital flows. We use a dynamic stochastic general equilibrium (DSGE) model to simulate a baseline scenario with...

The advent of stablecoins offers new and innovative ways to improve financial inclusion, reduce transaction costs, and increase the efficiency of the global financial system. The following paper explores the assets and process necessary for creating a central bank digital currency (CBDC) on the...

We make a distinction between centralized, decentralized, and distributed payment mechanisms. A centralized payment mechanism processes a transaction using a trusted third party. A decentralized payment mechanism processes a transaction between the parties to the transaction. A distributed...

Digital currencies have attracted strong interest in recent years and have the potential to become widely adopted for use in making payments. Public authorities and central banks around the world are closely monitoring developments in digital currencies and studying their implications for the...

The prospect of central banks issuing digital currency (CBDC) immediately raises the question of how this new form of money should co-exist and interact with existing forms of money. This paper evaluates three different scenarios for the implementation of CBDC in terms of their monetary policy...