Cryptocurrencies, Meet the Financial Action Task Force
Cryptocurrencies are a different sort of financial technology from bank deposits, yet they are being shoehorned into the same category for regulatory purposes.
READ MOREIs Facebook’s Libra the Dollar’s Killer App?
Facebook’s Libra is easily and probably rightly criticized by crypto purists as a halfway house that makes too many concessions to legacy systems and plays too nicely with the existing regulatory system. All true. But that’s not where the story ends.
READ MOREWhy did Bitcoin’s Price Increase by 24% in 90 minutes?
Volatility is to be expected for new media of exchange. But one should also be able to trace a lot of that volatility to news.
READ MOREDid You Write Your Bitcoin Obituary in Time?
Because so many lack the patience to understand, and perhaps because so few can explain it coherently, there is a strange lust in the land to debunk the whole thing. Every single time the market drops, people get busy writing obituaries for crypto. I’ve been seeing these appear since the market price was $14.
READ MORESmart Contracts Are All Around You
You should be able to take advantage of smart contracts in many ways, and in many situations, if you just understand smart contracts are a way of managing contingencies.
READ MOREThe Case for Prepaid Debit Cards
Financial privacy and autonomy are important. But cash and cryptocurrencies are not the only means to those ends.
READ MORECryptocurrencies Are Here to Stay
It is not hard to find commentary on the internet indicating that Bitcoin is bound to fail. But there is no reason to think that cryptocurrencies will disappear.
READ MOREWhy JPM Coin Makes Perfect Sense
Using an encrypted digital ledger – one that substitutes hashes for trust – eliminates vast numbers of layers and time. Time and trust equal counterparty risk. Automating this with blockchain drops the costs to a small fraction while increasing certainty.
READ MOREJPM Coin Shows Why History Matters for Blockchain Technology
Financial intermediaries that might not stand a chance against blockchain technology were it allowed to develop in a vacuum instead might be strengthened by it.
READ MOREWill Bitcoin’s Lightning Network Bring Back the Promise of Electronic Cash?
Ten years have passed since Bitcoin was introduced, and it still isn’t used much in online commerce. Will the Lightning Network get it back on track?
READ MOREWhy MMT (Ultimately) Doesn’t Matter
MMT is an academically-garbed attempt to overcome the unwelcome fact that governments are as bound by economic limits as firms and individuals are. Yet liberty always triumphs.
READ MOREThe History of Money and the Future of Cryptocurrency
In a recent NBER working paper, Barry Eichengreen argues “there is no straight line from commodity money to fiat money and from there to crypto.”
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