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...

Cash use in most countries is falling slowly. On the margin, younger adults favor cash substitutes over cash. For older adults it is the reverse. Revealed preference tied to a changing population age structure seems to be the main influence on the demand for cash and why it is falling. Cash use...

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...

Payment and settlement systems and services have become vital components of the economic life of contemporary societies. Over the last decades, they have gone through several waves of reforms that have changed the landscape of the national payments system (NPS) in virtually every country in the...

In a short period of time virtual currencies have gained significant traction and become an economic reality, with Bitcoin being the most dominant among over 500 virtual currencies. Bitcoin and other virtual currencies present a particularly difficult and unique jurisdictional challenge to...

We characterize various currencies according to their control structure, focusing on cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin and government-issued fiat money. We then argue that there is a large unmet demand for a liquid asset that allows households and firms to save outside of the private financial sector

Bitcoin provides its users with transaction-processing services which are similar to those of traditional payment systems. This paper models the novel economic structure implied by Bitcoin's innovative decentralized design, which allows the payment system to be reliably operated by unrelated...

This paper explores cryptocurrencies against the backdrop of the history of monetary, banking and payment systems, from a legal perspective. Providing a historical overview beginning in Antiquity, it explores just how today's cyber revolution compares against some key predicate operations, and...