Crypto-currencies, Speculation and the Evolution of Monetary Systems

Abstract

The development of new digital technologies in the areas of cryptography, distributed ledgers and mobile phones is affecting the way money is used for economic transactions. Electronic payments systems are rapidly replacing the use of cash. New powerful distributed ledger technologies, operated on a peer-to-peer decentralized basis is leading to the rapid expansion of digital money, with bitcoin being the most prominent digital currency (although there are more than one-thousand different crypto-currencies).