Could cryptocurrencies become monetary units of account?

Abstract

Ever since the emergence of cryptocurrencies, scholars have grappled with the question of whether they are forms of money or not. The most interesting problem, however, is not if these instruments are already money, but whether they could become money. One crucial aspect in this regard is the potential (or lack thereof) of a privately-issued cryptocurrency to become the monetary unit of account. Drawing on Marx’s theory of money and making the hypothesis that cryptocurrencies are digital commodities, the article argues that cryptocurrencies create a unit of account (BTC) to describe a novel monetary instrument (a Bitcoin coin) aspiring to become a new form of world money. So far, they have not been widely used to denominate prices, incomes, or credits/debts except in certain, still limited but growing, areas of the on-chain digital world. Things could change if the use of cryptocurrencies spills over to the off-chain (digital and non-digital) world. Nevertheless, the adoption of cryptocurrencies as units of account would face several challenges in international and national circulation, crucially among them, the action of states to remain in control of the monetary unit.