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A New World of Money – Blockchain in Human History Series

In the previous episode of “Blockchain in Human History” series, we have used 3 influence observation factor (IoF): money form, money issuance and money flow to examine the significance of blockchain in achieving monetary and financial freedom. In this article we take a deep dive in money issuance standard to witness the evolution of money. The evolution of money issuance standard can be summarized in four phases:

1. Barter

Barter trading involves the trade of physical commodities. It was first recorded in Egypt in 9000 B.C. which farmers used grain, wheat and cattle to barter other goods and services. There was no medium of exchange involved in the barter trade. The concept of commodity money emerged in 3000 B.C., which the Mesopotamians used shekel, a specific weight of barley grain to develop a large-scale economy.

2. Gold Standard

Prior to the emergence of coins as money, money was in forms of other physical objects. In 1200 B.C., cowrie shells were used as a medium of exchange across coastal regions across the Indian Ocean. In 1000 B.C., China used metallic cowries using bronze and copper as money. Coins first appeared in 500 B.C. in Lydia (in Turkey) which were made using a mixture of gold and silver. Due to the bulkiness of coins as medium of exchange, paper money was first introduced in the Song dynasty in China. Macro polo’s travels to Eastern Asia have brought the idea of paper currency back to the Europeans. Sweden has issued the first banknote in Europe in 1661 and other countries started to follow. However, as there was a lack of regulation in the printing of paper money, the face value of banknotes was determined by the reputation of the issuer and many banknotes became almost meaningless.

The limitations of banknotes led to the establishment of gold standard by countries. Gold standard is the monetary system which the country’s currency is pegged to physical gold. In 1816, Britain recognized gold as the official standard of value and they minted one pound gold coin named the Sovereign. In 1821, Britain became the first country to formally adopt a gold standard.

In 1867, the first International Monetary Conference was held in Paris. Félix Esquirou de Parieu, the French statesman who originated the Latin Monetary Union, proposed a single gold standard and decimalization of currencies and were approved by principal countries of the conference. The America enacted the Gold Standard Act in 1900, which led to the establishment of central bank. During the Great Depression in 1930s, both Britain and the America abolished the gold standard in 1931 and 1933.

Gold standard was once again adopted by nations following the Bretton Woods Agreement signed in 1944. Delegates from 44 countries attended the United Nations Monetary and Financial Conference in Bretton Woods. The Bretton Woods Agreement led to the establishment of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. Moreover, it was agreed that the value of other currencies was pegged to the value of USD, which is indirectly pegged to the price of gold at $35 per ounce.

The Bretton Wood System became fully functional in 1958 which countries settled their international balances in USD which could be fully convertible to gold. The U.S. government was responsible to adjust the USD supply and maintain the conversion rate between USD and gold. The Bretton Wood system collapsed in the early 1970s.

3. National Credit Standard

The drawbacks of Bretton Wood system surfaced in 1960s, which the USD was in surplus due to the increase on federal spending such as foreign aid, military expenditures, foreign investments and domestic programs. The USD became overvalued as a result which could undermine the foreign trading position of the United States.

Spoken on 15 Aug 1971, U.S. President Richard Nixon believed “The time has come for a new economic policy, targeting unemployment, inflation and international speculation.” He then directed Secretary Connally to abolish the conversion of gold and USD in the interests of monetary stability, which led to the collapse of the Bretton Woods system. This is referred as the ‘Nixon Shock’. In response to Nixon Shock, the Group of Ten (G-10) set up the Smithsonian Agreement, a temporary agreement to set the new exchange rate based on the devalued USD, which was proven unsuccessful at the end.

In Mar 1973, the G-10 called for six European members to adopt a floating exchange rate system against the USD. This means the exchange rate is determined by the market forces, which marked the end of fixed exchange rate system and the Bretton Woods system. Since then, the value of currency is determined by the national credit and its credibility as the payment and settlement currency, as well as the unit of account.

Following the collapse of Bretton Woods system, the U.S. struck the deal with Saudi Arabia which oil prices were standardized in USD terms and oil revenues are denominated in USD. The USD became the “petrodollar” and the purchasing power of petrodollar relied on the U.S. core inflation rate and the value of USD. The petrodollar elevated USD as the world’s reserve currency. The 2016 Triennial Central Bank Survey by the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) revealed that USD remains the dominant currency as 88% foreign exchange deals involved USD. The monetary policy by U.S. federal reserve plays an important role in determining today’s monetary system.

4. Blockchain based standard

With the advent of blockchain technology, we can foresee the vision set by Nobel-prize winner Friedrich A. Hayek: Denationalization of Money, can become a reality in future. If denationalization of money is said to be a reality, we can expect that blockchain will be the basis of issuance for corporations or individuals launching their own currencies. Here are some of the observations why blockchain can be the next money issuance standard:

a) Stability of Fiat Currencies given Macroeconomic Turmoil

With the ongoing trade war between China and the U.S., the UBS predicts that the GDP growth of the US will slip to 1.8% in Q4 2019 and 0.3% of Q2 2020. The trade war adds further uncertainty to US businesses as Donald Trump lifted up import tariffs of Chinese goods by 5%, which in turn US businesses will pass on the higher costs to consumers.

The recent macroeconomic turmoil led us to rethink the stability of existing fiat currencies. For instance:

i) The collapse of Argentine Peso following the defeat of Marci’s presidential election, which the Argentinian stock market plummets by almost 14%;

ii) The ongoing depreciation of Chinese Yuan against USD

As the trade war escalates, Chinese Yuan dropped below 7 to USD in Aug 2019, the first time since Feb 2008. Donald Trump claimed China as the “currency manipulator”, which China was accused of breaking the promise in the G20 summit of staying away from competitive devaluation;

iii) Surging volatility of British Pounds (GBP) with Brexit fiascoIf a “hard Brexit” is set to happen, it may costs the U.K. of GBP $190B in economic fallout by 2030;

iv)Debt crisis in ItalyItaly owes 2.3T in public debt, which amounts to 133% of its GDP.

The instability of fiat currencies declines public trust in governments. As a result, they are starting to explore cryptocurrencies as an alternative as medium of exchange and storage of value.

b) Central bank digital currency?

We can foresee that central banks accelerate their plans to launch their CBDC especially following the announcement of Facebook’s Libra. People’s Bank of China, for example, proposed a Chinese CBDC backed 1:1 by fiat reserves (M0 supply). This CBDC will be based on a two-tier system for issuance and redemptions, with manageable anonymity and encryption features. It is noteworthy that CBDC is mostly built on permissioned instead of public blockchains.

c) Own digital currency by corporations and individuals

With the advent of blockchain, we have witnessed several traditional giants announced their own digital currencies, most notably Facebook’s Libra and JP Morgan coin (JPM). Individuals such as Manny Pacquiao also launched his own digital currency. Both public and permissioned blockchain are used to launch digital currencies for corporations and individuals.

d) Proof-of-work: the new issuance standard on blockchain?

Compared to the money issuance standard in the past, Bitcoin as the flagship cryptocurrency is built using the Proof-of-work (PoW) consensus mechanism. However, with the high energy consumption and limited efficiency, PoW is not the optimal token issuance standard on blockchain while other consensus algorithm such as Proof-of-stake. Currently there is no consensus in the optimal money issuance standard using blockchain.

e) The Future of Financial Infrastructure

We believe the use of blockchain will streamline financial services industry and revolutionize the existing financial structure. The payment and settlement process of digital currencies are streamlined using blockchain without intermediaries involved.

Apart from real time settlement and removal of counterparty risks, compliance processes are standardized in payments and trade finance using blockchain. In future, we can foresee a distributed financial infrastructure by blockchain, in convergence with other technologies such as artificial intelligence and internet of things (IoT).

In future, whether denationalization of money becomes a reality remains to be seen. However, it is evident that blockchain-based currency will be the new money issuance standard and we will witness a new world of money!

New Money Theory: Understanding the Fundamental Internal and External Factors of Money

In brief

We introduce the internal and external factors of money to explain the concept of money systematically. Internal factors: money form, money issuance standard, and money flow. External factors: power, evolution, competition, and competition output.
Currently, money is an extension of power. Money has a huge influence on shaping humanity’s collective values. With blockchain, humans, for the first time in our history have the power to design money with goodwill, while also removing the absolute power of institutional money issuers and “trusted third parties”.

Money has always had a fundamental influence on the development of the world and society’s values. Money is a major incentive for our economic society. Everybody knows the importance of money, but how money is created and achieves its value still remains a mystery for most people.

A real consideration of what makes something valuable can be mindblowing and the factors can range from spiritual to utility, but often throughout history, forms of value have been connected to scarcity, things that were difficult to acquire or mine like gold, silver, and diamonds. In the Napoleonic era, aluminum was seen as far more valuable than gold as it was more scarce and difficult to acquire at the time. Napoleon’s crown was even made from aluminum to highlight his supreme power as Emperor, but, by today’s standards, the prospect of aluminum being more valuable than gold is quite absurd. The design of currency can drive humans toward a collective staple value, as was the case with Gold for thousands of years and later on Gold-backed currency issuance. Blockchain technology, however, creates a new system of value.

Through Blockchain technology, we can create a whole new system of value and even design a new currency with the purpose of bringing true monetary freedom to humans for the first time in their history. To understand the essence of money and its influence on human society, in this article, we introduce six factors to describe money in two categories: internal factors and external factors.

Internal and External Factors

Internal factors: money form, money issuance standard, money flow. Those reflect the essence of money.

External factors: power evolution, competition, competition output. Those reflect the nature of humans in terms of money.

In the previous post “Blockchain Brings Monetary and Financial Freedom”, we have already discussed the internal factors that give money value. In this article, we map the relationship between money and its influence on human society, in terms of human incentive, human nature, human welfare, and more—the external factors. We investigate and demystify money in a combination of internal and external factors.

On power evolution and money form

When gold was used as money in forms of gold coins or gold bars, everybody had a consensus on gold itself. No central authority or agency could influence the value of Gold.Gradually, central and sovereign authorities achieved the power of standardization of gold and maintained the power of supervising thereafter. But gold ultimately proved to be quite inconvenient for trade, so humanity progressed to the gold-backed paper money. We trusted in the paper money issuer and one type of credit was introduced.

Then speculation prevailed. Paper money was not fully backed by gold. The concept of ” leverage” and another type of credit were introduced and we need to trust the issuer. This is actually what typical commercial banks have been doing. We can say that it is the inherently physical defect of gold. And leave us to design a better currency without such weakness.

Bitcoin is quite different from traditional electronic money as its ownership is guaranteed by private key and bitcoin network security which related to computing power. The technology guaranteed ownership is different from ownership guaranteed by law as law. We can bitcoin’s ownership “absolute ownership”.

On power evolution and money issuance standard

Initially, take gold as an example, the issuance of money is decentralized, everybody can do gold mining. There were once a few gold rushes in history. The standardization of gold gave the authority the power of supervision. Then the authority provided the market with “alternative coins”. It is the coin with less gold or mixed with other heavy metals. Then the authority introduced the partial power of issuance. As mentioned above, paper money needs to be backed by gold reserve, be it full reserve or not full reserve. But what would happen if we removed the gold reverse? Well, the money seems to be issued from the thin air. This is exactly how money is issued in our current monetary system. In other words, money issuance is backed by national credit. And authority monopolized the issuance power. You know it is illegal to print paper money by yourself because of no national credit in it.

This money issuance standard began after 1973 when the US defaulted its US dollar for gold promise and the fixed exchange rate became fluctuated. This marked the collapse of the Bretton Woods system. It was not a money issuance perfect update but a national default from fears that the gold reserve could drain dry. As the US dollar is the de facto world currency, now virtually all money is US dollar-based money issuance standard. The money issuance power transited from distributed to monopoly and absolute power.

Where there is a dependence, there is a risk of being influenced or enslaved. In an international relationship, there is a phenomenon where one countries monetary is highly influenced by another country. We call it “money colony”.

Will the money issuance right get back to the general public in the long run? Hayek in his famous book “Denationalization of Money” once conceived the vision of private money. This type of private money is different from a period of the gold standard when the gold is the consensus and private miners are reliable providers of gold money. We can devise a new money creation mechanism that has consensus among all people and the creation will benefit all in general. Bitcoin a good start.

On power evolution and money flow

Money flow refers to payment, settlement, remittance, etc. Most money flow is in the hands of traditional financial institutions. In general, the service of money flow is high. Traditional financial institutions have monopolized the money flow system. Although we have witnessed the emerging fintech industry that has made money flow a bit more convenient, it still has much space to improve.

With blockchain, we can reduce the concept set. And the implementation is much simpler. Blockchain provides an alternative to traditionally US dollar-based settlement networks. Blockchain also provides an alternative to the current payment network globally. With the power of money flow transitioned to blockchain-based, we can expect an apparent cost reduction in money flow.

On competition field and money issuance standard

We categorize competition field into consensus-based and non-consensus based (or credit-based)

If there is a consensus on the form of money like with the gold standard, the competition evolves into who can get the most money. And we are happy to utilize new technologies to improve efficiency in gold mining. Sometimes, we may even engage in all out conflict in seizing the gold mining field as well.

For bitcoin, it is Proof-of-Work (POW) based. The competition on bitcoin creation is reduced to computing power and power consumption.

For fiat money, there is actually no consensus on money. The money issuance is based on national credit, it is the national credit standard. The fiat money is forced in circulation by government nationally and internationally its values are determined by its adoption or requirement.

This money issuance standard is quite different from gold standard. The competition is a much likely zero-sum game. This can be seen as money colony.

For national credit standards, money is forced into circulation by government nationally and internationally its values are determined by its adoption or requirement. This is quite different from the gold standard. The competition is a zero-sum game. This can be seen as a money colony.

On competition out and money issuance standard

Different competitions lead to different results and side effects.

In the era of the gold standard, we definitely got more and more gold. And as a side effect, we created more efficient ways of mining gold and improving mining tools. Under national credit issuance, actually there is no consensus on money as there was with the gold standard. This standard easily leads to conflict in the money adoption field, like oil, resource, countries. To maintain the dominance or zone of influence, military operation may be incurred. Typically currencies like USD, EURO, and RMB all have tried its way to increase influence in terms of money adoption or requirement. On bitcoin’s POW, we get back to a money consensus with unified rules for all. It would waste power and computing power in some sense. But we can guess computing power is the most important factor in a future society where AI and smart machines prevail. Competition on computing power and power efficiency would accelerate the development of our society.

Design money with human goodwill

can we design new money issuance standards for a better world? Is the human goodwill currency following God’s expectation?

Bitcoin’s POW raised concerns about waste of computing power and power. The key here is how to reduce the cost to contribution instead of wasting of computing power and power.

Let’s reversal thinking. We first focus on the goal of competition output, our goal here is the development of human society. Let’s go deeper, What’s the most important and most basic and stable factor(s) that serves for the development of human society? We proposed: take these factor(s) as the input of money issuance. The money issuance standard problem is reduced to the contribution of the development of human society. The is completely new. Since our society is driven by value incentives and we have redefined value creation, this may lead to the reconstruction of our value system. And since basic money is mainly from machine-based algorithms. It shifts our focus from “human-oriented” to “machine-oriented”. This is large cooperation on a global scale. We need more research on this topic.

Author: Kun Hu, Francis Lau

Editor: Lucas Cacioli