We discuss the pros of adopting government-issued digital currencies as well as a supranational digital iCurrency. One such pro is to get rid of paper money (and coinage), a ubiquitous medium for spreading germs, as highlighted by the recent coronavirus outbreak. We set forth three policy...

High levels of financial exclusion in developing countries have left millions of citizens with inadequate access to financial services. While various solutions and strategies have been developed to cope with this challenge, in the current research, we explore a popular model of cash exchange...

Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs) are currently the hottest topic in the financial markets. They typically use blockchain technology to offer so-called ‘tokens' that can confer various rights. Experts estimate that the amount of money raised via ICOs will reach US$ 20 billion by the end of 2018....

We establish that global portfolios are driven by an often neglected aspect: the currency of denomination of assets. Using a dataset of $27 trillion in security-level investment positions, we demonstrate that investor holdings are biased toward their own currencies to such an extent that each...

Cryptocurrencies are a new emergence at the intersection of technology and finance. It is therefore of particular interest whether cryptocurrencies can form a new asset class or need to be subsumed under an existing one. We find that cryptocurrencies show characteristics of a distinct asset...

Merchant Authorized Consumer Cash Substitutes (MACCS) have existed in one form or another for hundreds of years although without a generic name. At nineteenth century American railroad construction sites far from established towns, companies paid employees with “scrip.” Coca Cola, beginning...

Blockchains and Byzantine Fault Tolerance form the basis of decentralized currencies and ledgers such as Bitcoin, Ripple, ZeroCash, and Ethereum. A large slate of literature has focused on the currency aspects (e.g. anonymity, independence from central banks, etc.). We argue that, as-far-as...

Bitcoin is a relatively new technology with much promise. As the world's first successful cryptocurrency, it seems likely to lower the costs of transacting. Nonetheless, many regulators hold a strong presumption that something must be done. I considered the popular justifications for regulating...

This paper summarises the outcome of an analysis of stablecoins undertaken by the ECB Crypto-Assets Task Force. At the time of writing, the stablecoin debate lacks a common taxonomy and unambiguous terminology. This paper applies a definition that distinguishes stablecoins from existing forms of...