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310 results · page 9 of 13
Chris Berg, Sinclair Davidson, Jason Potts
No abstract is available for this record.
Stephen Williamson
Do Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies play a useful social role, or do they represent a social waste? Bitcoin is a decentralized recordkeeping system, with updating of the record of transactions in the blockchain.
Aleksander Berentsen, Fabian Schär
We characterize various currencies according to their control structure, focusing on cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin and government-issued fiat money. We then argue that there is a large unmet demand for a liquid asset that allows households and firms to save outside of the private financial sector. Central banks could offer such an asset by simply allowing households and firms to open accounts with them. Finally, we conclude that a central bank will not issue cryptocurrencies in the sense of a truly decentralized and permissionless asset that allows users to remain anonymous.
Linda Schilling, Harald Uhlig
In a novel model of an endowment economy, we analyze coexistence and competition between traditional fiat money (Dollar) and another intrinsically worthless medium of exchange, not controlled by a central bank, such as Bitcoin. Agents can trade consumption goods in either currency or hold on to currency for speculative purposes. A central bank ensures a Dollar inflation target, while Bitcoin mining is decentralized via proof-of-work. We analyze Bitcoin price evolution and interaction between the Bitcoin price and monetary policy which targets the Dollar. We obtain a fundamental pricing equation, which in its simplest form implies that Bitcoin prices form a martingale. We derive conditions, under which Bitcoin speculation cannot happen, and the fundamental pricing equation must hold. We show that the block rewards are not a tax on Bitcoin holders: they are financed by Dollar taxes imposed by the Dollar central bank. We discuss monetary policy implications and characterize the range of equilibria.
Jakub Jedlinský, Ingeborg Němcová
ÄlĂĄnek pomocĂ simulace provedenĂŠ v programu Minsky zkoumĂĄ efekty pĹeddefinovanĂŠ a nemÄnnĂŠ monetĂĄrnĂ politiky podle vzoru fungovĂĄnĂ kryptomÄny Bitcoin a porovnĂĄvĂĄ je s vĂ˝sledky souÄasnĂŠho mÄnovĂŠho systĂŠmu kreditnĂ fiat mÄny. Minsky je specializovanĂ˝ software pro tvorbu SFC ekonomickĂ˝ch modelĹŻ. Pracuje ve spojitĂŠm Äase. Bitcoin je na rozdĂl od eura aktivnĂ mÄna, kterĂĄ nenĂ vytvĂĄĹenĂĄ ĂşÄetnÄ proti dluhu a neumoĹžĹuje fiduciĂĄrnĂ emisi. Studie zkoumĂĄ komplexnÄ ekonomiku EU se zamÄĹenĂm na jejĂ mÄnovĂ˝ systĂŠm, a to za pouĹžitĂ dat poskytovanĂ˝ch Eurostatem. NĂĄslednÄ mÄnĂ pravidla systĂŠmu tak, aby odpovĂdala pravidlĹŻm protokolu Bitcoinu. ProvedenĂŠ simulace ukazujĂ po Äase odliĹĄnĂŠ dopady tÄchto systĂŠmovĂ˝ch nastavenĂ na rozdÄlenĂ bohatstvĂ mezi jednotlivĂŠ skupiny ekonomickĂ˝ch agentĹŻ a na stabilitu ekonomiky jako celku.
Marco Sachy
This thesis will begin with a critique to the orthodox paradigm in monetary economics. Secondly, I will offer a theoretical, economic, structural and biopolitical analyses of the origin, nature and effects of money on society. After a critique to conventional paradigm of money, I will then propose a semiotic genealogy of money followed by an analysis of the Common, the Multitude together with a tentative fourfold proposal for monetary reform, i.e. a monetary dispositif for the socio-economic emancipation of the Multitude from the rule of capital to build a new paradigm of money. In particular, I will discuss the literatures on basic income and the emerging notion for bottom-up welfare named Commonfare; the Neo-Chartalist approach to money; complementary, viz. subaltern currencies; and crypto-currencies and distributed ledgers technology. In turn, I will present the two qualitative methodologies that I endorsed to design and research four sites of inquiry in Iceland, Spain, Finland and Italy: Participatory Action Research and Critical Muti-Sited Ethnography. A discussion of fieldwork findings will follow. Moreover, I will offer a comparative analysis on fieldwork findings by identifying not only commonalities and differences among the four sites, but also by eliciting the limits of methodological choices. I will conclude this thesis by arguing to refine the theoretical framework introduced in the literature review; and notwithstanding personal and objective limitations to the application of the monetary dispositif in the real world, I will advocate for further inquiry on Money for the Common Wealth of the Multitude to increase the quality and effectiveness of the debate on suggestions for monetary reform.
Laura Davidson, Walter E. Block
A controvérsia acerca da emergência do bitcoin como um novo meio de troca e sua conciliação com o teorema da regressão de Mises tem se intensificado nos últimos tempos. A questão principal do debate pode ser assim formulada: teria o bitcoin um valor de uso direto? O presente estudo afirma que o teorema da regressão não tem aplicabilidade à questão da gênese do bitcoin, pois o teorema limita-se a explicar a emergência de um novo meio de troca sob uma economia de troca pura ou escambo. O debate, portanto, está fundamentado em um erro de interpretação do teorema. Entretanto, a questão do valor de uso direto do bitcoin, se é que se pode afirmar que exista, tem sim importância para a avaliação da probabilidade de o bitcoin tornar-se um meio de troca generalizadamente aceito – isto é, dinheiro.
Gaëtan Marain
International audience
Shuba Olena А., Honcharova Yuliia Yu., Bulygina Anastasia V.
The article is aimed at researching bitcoin, the digital currency. It has been found that Bitcoin is a cryptocurrency, that is, the virtual money, which has no material equivalent. The history of creation and development of cryptocurrency was reviewed. There is a reduction in volatility, which guarantees the security of currency, as well as the increase in currency volume and the inability to estimate the profitability of bitcoins. The dynamics of the value of digital currency in US dollars over recent years has been analyzed. Improvement of attitude of many countries to the considered cryptocurrency, in particular the USA, Germany, Spain, Canada, Australia, Israel and Scandinavian countries has been identified. The reasons of Ukraine’s interest in Bitcoin have been considered. Possibilities of creation of cryptocurrency on the territory of Ukraine have been analyzed, i.e. cost of electricity for mining, the legal status of mining firms, and the attitude of the National Bank of Ukraine to the digital currency. It has been concluded that the recognition of Bitcoin by the world countries in the future will allow it to be granted the status of world-wide currency.
S. Andryushin, В К Бурлачков
Аннотация Предмет
Boon Seng Tan, Kin Yew Low
Despite its increasing popularity, no official guidance on the financial reporting of Bitcoin transactions has been provided by standard setters, although tax accounting guidance began to appear in 2014. Designed as a decentralised currency, Bitcoin is not intended to become a reporting currency and will instead complement fiat money. We argue that in the case of Bitcoin the accounting principle of faithful representation requires interpretation of the economic substance for financial reporting that varies with reporting entity: trading firms recognise Bitcoin like a foreign currency and measure the revenue, or expense, at the equivalent amount of the reporting currency and digital currency exchanges recognise Bitcoin as goods in line with tax accounting treatment. An Economica paper by Radford (1945), which describes the use of cigarettes as commodity money in a prisoner of war camp alludes to this economic basis. This paper applies accounting principles to a practical issue and contributes to the process by which standard setters may issue an interpretation.
Alexander Lipton
We introduce blockchains and distributed ledgers and describe their potential applications to money and banking. The analysis compares public and private ledgers and outlines the suitability of various types of ledgers for different purposes. Furthermore, a few historical prototypes of blockchains and distributed ledgers are presented, and results of their hard forking are illustrated. Next, some potential applications of distributed ledgers to trading, clearing and settlement, payments, trade finance, etc. are outlined. Monetary circuits are argued to be natural applications for blockchains. Finally, the role of digital currencies in modern society is articulated and various forms of digital cash, such as central bank issued electronic cash, bank money, bitcoin and P2P money, are compared and contrasted. Keywords: blockchains, distributed ledgers, digital currencies, modern monetary circuit; credit creation banking; interconnected banking network.
Pascal Lafourcade, Jean‐Guillaume Dumas
International audience
Bill Maurer
The agencies of money gain new currency as new privately owned systems for creating and transferring value occupy the imagination of industry players and regulators, as well as us everyday folk. Experts have predicted the end of cash and coin almost as soon as modern governments standardized their issue. But before there was coin, there were records of transactions warranting other transactions and literally inscribing (in clay, stone, papyrus) the distributed agencies of human interaction. Asking after the infrastructures facilitating that transfer leads to the role of accounting not as a record of monetary interaction, but as that interaction itself. It is precisely a question of the distribution of agency: who shall make entries into the great ledger of human transaction and exchange? As the ledger pluralizes, who controls the cross-referencing, the gateways between newly dispersed accounts?
Meixing Dai, Moïse Sidiropoulos
Le bitcoin attire de plus en plus l'attention des spéculateurs, des consommateurs et des sites marchands, et augmente rapidement en capitalisation. Les autorités de régulation sont plus que jamais préoccupées par la façon dont il doit être traité du point de vue économique. Est-il une monnaie, une chaîne de Ponzi ou un actif financier très spéculatif ? Selon les réponses données à cette question, les réactions des autorités seront très différentes.
Daniel Heller
Bitcoin is the first digital currency to have received widespread recognition and interest from users, developers, investors, central banks, and regulators, largely because of its “distributed ledger” technology, which allows it to provide relatively low-cost peer-to-peer transfers of money. Users own the bitcoin system and can make changes to the rules and protocol only by consensus or a supermajority of 95 percent. This communitarian ownership model and the fact that payments in bitcoin can be easily made from one end of the globe to another have led many to believe and hope that bitcoin will one day replace sovereign currencies—and the central banks that issue them. In addition, some observers see bitcoin as the origin of a fundamental transformation of the financial system toward a more decentralized structure. As a medium of exchange, bitcoin is still small compared with traditional channels, and it is held largely for speculation rather than transactions. Its lack of a mechanism for dampening the price effect of an increase in demand or reducing supply in case of a demand slump means that adopting bitcoin as a currency would be like reverting to a currency based on gold coins. As long as central banks continue to pursue stability-oriented monetary policies, they will have little reason to fear that the bitcoin system will replace them.
Christian Pfister
In spite of a still very low volume at the global level, in comparison with the main reserve currencies, digital currencies attract a lot of attention. The paper reminds that it is above all the exchange mechanism incorporated in digital currencies (the distributed ledger technology) which should contribute to their success. It is shown that a widespread use of these currencies is likely to materialize only under conditions that woulDeessentially leave unchanged the capacity of the central bank to pursue the same inflation target using the same instruments as today, by setting an interest rate level. However, some adjustments may have to be made to the definition of monetary aggregates and possibly also to the base and/or the ratios of reserve requirements. Even in the most extreme and unlikely scenario, where the central bank would issue CBDC the public would have access to and massively adopt, banks role in distributing credit would likely not be seriously impaired. Banks might rather have less direct information on their clients. They would possibly also become more dependent on central bank refinancing, which would call for a clear and pre-announced lending of last resort policy in order to limit moral hazard considerations.
Alistair Milne
No abstract is available for this record.
William J. Luther
Abstract By declaring an item legal tender or making it publicly receivable, governments might generate sufficient demand to determine the medium of exchange. How do private actors launch a new money? There are two views in the literature. The first requires offering an item with a use value to some agents that is distinct from its role as a medium of exchange. The second suggests that agents might coordinate on an intrinsically useless item. With these views in mind, I survey the logs from the original bitcoin forum, bitcoin-list. I find that early participants in the bitcoin community understood the importance of coordination and took steps to coordinate users.
William J. Luther
Monies are typically categorized as commodity or fiat, depending on whether the item in question is intrinsically worthless. In the case of bitcoin, it is not so clear. I consider the superficial subjective value argument often put forward by non-monetary economists and a more sophisticated payments technology argument. After dismissing both, I argue that there are two reasonable views on the value of bitcoin. One might claim bitcoin lacks intrinsic worth, in which case its value depends on foresight and coordination. Alternatively, one might claim that bitcoin has intrinsic worth, even if no one else accepts it, because some users have peculiar preferences. In either case, the existence of bitcoin calls into question the practical relevance of the regression theorem.
Rodrigo Morais Paim Silva
O objetivo desse trabalho e estudar se a Bitcoin pode ser considerada uma moeda a partir da evolucao historica e suas diferentes formas e funcoes. Desde o escambo as pessoas buscam formas de transacionar bens e servicos. Para facilitar as trocas alguns itens comecaram a ser utilizados para intermedia-las, mas a falta de um padrao monetario trazia problemas. A evolucao veio com o uso de metais preciosos como ouro, prata e cobre para funcionarem como unidade de conta, meio de troca e reserva de valor. Mais tarde os bancos comecaram a emitir notas com lastro no ouro que tinham em seus cofres, o padrao-ouro. Com o fim do lastro em ouro as moedas passaram a ser fiduciarias e de curso legal ou forcado. Em 2008 foi criada a Bitcoin, o primeiro dinheiro digital escasso que existe. Ele e programado para ter um total de 21 milhoes de moedas. Esse limite de total de moedas e o que gera a volatilidade que compromete duas funcoes da BTC como moeda. Pressoes relativas ao aumento ou reducao da demanda tem impacto direto em seu valor. Ela pode funcionar como meio de troca sem problemas, mas as funcoes reserva de valor e unidade de conta ficam comprometidas devido a volatilidade apresentada.
Ayushi Bajaj, Tai-Wei Hu, Guillaume Rocheteau, Mario Rafael Silva
No abstract is available for this record.
Boyd Cohen
During this decade we have witnessed the introduction or scaling of several forms of alternative currencies. The Alternative Currency Database includes more than 300 local alternative paper currencies. Cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin represent non-government backed digital currencies that have grown substantially through the underlying blockchain technology. Timebanking is another form of alternative currency where more than four million hours of time have been exchanged for future time from network members around the globe. I believe we are on the cusp of a transformation in how value is captured and exchanged in society. Much of this change is driven by a grassroots, and technologically-empowered movement, to confront the ills perceived to be powered and exacerbated by market-based capitalism, such as climate change and income inequality. I will argue that alternative currencies discourage passive investment, and therefore serve as a powerful alternative to market-based capitalism. Throughout this essay, I refer to ‘traditional currencies’ as strong currencies and alternative currencies as ‘weak currencies’. Strong currencies allow for, and frequently incorporate incentives for investors, speculators, financiers and others to hoard or leverage money for economic gain, whereas weak currencies are those with no inherent incentive in accumulating the currency, and in fact, may have built-in disincentives to do so. Before describing each of the three forms of alternative currencies of interest in this essay (local paper currency, timebanking and cryptocurrency) it is worth briefly reviewing current thinking about alternative currencies. While management scholars have largely been blinded by the emergence of alternative currencies, scholars in many other fields have explored alternative currencies from multiple perspectives. Currencies are a mechanism for enabling an exchange between parties. Whereas traditional currencies are backed by nation states, alternative currencies are not. Political scientists have been exploring local currencies as a challenge to the legitimacy of nation states for decades (e.g., Williams, 1996). The resistance to the power of the state, expressed as growth in alternative, non-government backed currencies, contributes to the positioning of alternative currencies as a response to perceived failures of capitalism and the nation states that continue to support market-based capitalism. Similarly, economists have long viewed the birth of alternative currencies as a grassroots movement against capitalism, free-trade and globalization. In this sense, one could view alternative currencies as a manifestation of a social movement, a resistance against perceived ills brought by free trade, nation building and more recently, the increasing automation of work (often referred to as industry 4.0 or the fourth industrial revolution) which is leading to a sizable increase in freelancing and the ‘on-demand economy’. While much of the growth in freelancing is driven by capitalist tendencies of corporations to increase efficiencies and drive down costs there is also a growing interest in freelance and independent forms of work particularly amongst the millennial generation (Cohen, 2016). The growth in freelancing opens up avenues for the application of alternative currencies, particularly timebanking, whereby peers connected by platforms can exchange expertise without exchanging cash. So why do I view the weak nature of most alternative currencies to be a positive transformational condition for alternative currencies? As corporations continue to eliminate jobs due to efficiency gains and automation, many corporations and their shareholders are getting richer while much of the population is getting poorer. Alternative currencies being weak currencies mitigate wealth accumulation in the hands of a few and empower participants to benefit more directly from their contributions to the exchange system. The growing evidence suggests that market-based capitalism is adequate to good at supporting returns to passive investors. Venture capitalist and investors in publicly traded corporations have witnessed gains in recent decades, meanwhile employees of those companies, and society at large have failed to experience the same benefits. While the United Stated is in an economic recovery from the great recession, underemployment and income inequality continue to grow. The short-term profit maximization encouraged by investors in the stock market, and the quick path to exits for start-ups targeted by venture capitalists have yielded wealth accumulation in the hands of a few, yet resulted in little benefit to society as a whole. Proponents of a post-capitalist movement leverage the evidence of growing income inequalities and the shift of capital and wealth to the financial markets to suggest that we are witnessing the decline of capitalism due to what historian Ferdinand Braudel (1992) referred to as the financial autumn theory. When citizens, makers and producers of value in society share less in the economic benefits of their activity, while the financial players reap growing percentages of such economic activity, Braudel suggests this to be a signal that the prevailing economic model has reached its maturity. Alternative currencies yield business models that penalize hoarding and returns on investment, and instead focus on velocity of community-based transactions amongst peers and local businesses. Passive investors in the alternative currencies arena, therefore have little to gain. Where alternative currencies are weak and the orientation is on high velocity transactions, the active participants of the transactions will benefit more than passive investors. This is what positions alternative currencies as a direct reaction of the masses to the ‘financialization’ of the markets. Financialization occurs when lenders, financiers and investment bankers increasingly profit from citizens and consumers, through student loans, car loans, mortgages, credit cards and several other financial instruments. Forbes (Collins, 2015) defined financialization as ‘the growing scale and profitability of the finance sector at the expense of the rest of the economy and the shrinking regulation of its rules and returns’, highlighting that between 1970 and 2010, the finance industry doubled its share of GDP from 10 per cent to 20 per cent. Alternative currencies being weak currencies pose the potential to serve as tools for facilitating more direct exchange of value between peers and local businesses, at the same time, give little opportunity for the financialization we have witnessed in recent decades in market-based economies. Furthermore, the role of weak alternative currencies in transforming the relationship between founders, users, employees and investors amongst start-ups is a fascinating one. I would even argue that if we see a meaningful shift towards post-capitalist models, we will see the death of venture capital as we currently view it. As it is, we have collectively overhyped the importance of venture capital given its very small contribution to the global economy and the miniscule percentage of start-ups that receive venture capital. For example, a recent study by the Kaufman Foundation found that less than five percent of start-up funding in the United States comes from venture capital sources and only 6.5 per cent of high growth start-ups had received venture capital. I will briefly explore this concept in the context of each of the three alternative currencies that are the subject of this essay. In some form or another local currencies have been around for centuries, and of course pre-date modern, treasury-backed currencies at the national level. But since the widespread adoption of national currencies, local alternative currencies have had a place in societies around the globe. They have been commonly implemented in a grassroots fashion as a response to economic shocks, such as in Argentina after the economic crisis around the start of the twenty-first century. More recently, Spain for example, witnessed the introduction of a dozen local currencies following the 2008 crisis and, similarly, as the Wall Street Journal reported in 2015, Greece has experienced a big boost in the alternative currency movement. Perhaps surprisingly, local paper currencies are also flourishing in more than 50 communities throughout the United States. BerkShares, founded in 2006 in Berkshire, Massachusetts, are actually acquired by exchanging U.S. dollars for this local currency, which then must remain in the community. More than 400 local businesses in the community accept BerkShares for payment. The goal of BerkShares is to ‘maximize the circulation of goods, services, and capital within the region… and to distinguish the local businesses that accept the currency from those that do not’.1 While each local currency operates differently, these initiatives all seek to support local communities over foreign companies and investors. Local physical currencies are the epitome of weak currencies as they are virtually impossible to accumulate at any large scale that would give any single holder monopolistic rights. In fact it would be useless to achieve such a position because local currencies are only valuable with a local, active exchange system. Therefore, I have uncovered no examples of private passive investors in local paper currencies, suggesting that this form of currency does not enable the same dispersion between corporate and investor gains without social gains. To further reduce such a risk, many local currency systems implement a negative interest rate mechanism that serves to significantly disincent their hoarding. The concept behind timebanking is that instead of delivering a service in return for monetary reward, a member of a timebanking community can offer service to another member and then receive time credit to be utilized within the same timebanking community, but by any other member. The recipient of the original service is not obligated to deliver a service in return to the same member, but, instead, becomes indebted to the community and will owe an equivalent amount of time to another member. It is virtually impossible to accumulate time credit to a point where any individual in the community can exert monopoly power over the community. Thus timebanking is clearly a weak currency. Historically timebanking has been a very localized phenomenon relying on locally provided services to other members living in close proximity. Yet new social networking and video technologies allows for timebanking to potentially scale regionally or even globally. Brazil-based Bliive, for example, has facilitated the sharing of more than 100,000 hours of expertise in return for time credit through an online platform which connects primarily local timebankers to exchange value and expertise. Although in the case of Bliiive, their technology still primarily facilitates local interactions. My wife, currently enrolled in an Executive MBA program at EADA Business school is leading the development of a platform called the Professional Knowledge Exchange (PKX). This is one of the first timebanking initiatives I have discovered which hopes to leverage technology to connect global professionals. Instead of manual labour or local professional services, PKX aims to connect engineers, doctors, executives and other professionals in a global peer-to-peer network. A paediatrician based in Venezuela could seek expertise from a paediatrician in Brazil regarding most effective treatments of the Zika virus. Or an entrepreneur in Santiago, Chile seeking to launch an electric vehicle car sharing service could use PKX to find an expert from Paris who helped implement their Autolib'service. PKX plans to offer a hybrid model whereby users can choose to timebank or pay per hour of expertise sought. The first known experiments with cryptocurrencies occurred in the Netherlands in the mid-1980s. Yet, cryptocurrencies took off as something of note with the introduction of Bitcoin in 2008. The brainchild of a mysterious and as of yet unidentified person or group of persons, with the pseudonym, Satashio Nakamoto, Bitcoin emerged as a global, digital currency not controlled or supported by any government, i.e. a borderless, digital, alternative currency. Bitcoin is intended to be an anonymous digital currency that allows for transactions between individual without intermediaries. If I own bitcoins and want to buy your computer with bitcoins, we can agree on the value of the computer and I can transfer the Bitcoin equivalent value to you immediately. Thanks to the underlying blockchain technology I will discuss shortly, this transaction is instantaneous and recorded for eternity within the Bitcoin network. Bitcoin is not as weak of a currency as the others described in this essay as it is possible for an individual or group of individuals to accumulate bitcoins or even engage in currency speculation. The Bitcoin protocol has established that there will never be more than 21 million total bitcoins in circulation. The fact that there is a maximum limit could eventually incent investors and speculators to hoard bitcoins in the hopes that hoarding bitcoins could lead to a shortage and drive up their value. As such Bitcoin may appear to be out of context in an essay about alternative currencies as a post capitalist response. In fact, Bitcoin has had some big successes in the start-up community with more than $1 billion (USD) venture capital invested in Bitcoin start-ups since 2012 and $690 million in 2015 alone2. Bitcoin has also gained some traction in terms of owners of bitcoin currency being able to engage in online and physical transactions around the globe. Recently some companies have begun to introduce Bitcoin ATMs as well. Yet, Bitcoin did emerge as part of the 99 per cent movement and the frustration with banks too big to fail and failures of federal governments to implement policies which yield prosperity for all income classes. It is possible that Bitcoin may end up being just another form of market-based capitalism. What is perhaps more intriguing about Bitcoin and its role in facilitating a shift towards post capitalism, is its underlying technology known as blockchain. Blockchain is a distributed ledger technology that simultaneously records every Bitcoin transaction with every node or computer on the system around the globe. Industry experts, such as Goldman Sachs suggest that blockchain tech could eventually be worth tens of billions of dollars in finance, insurance and related industries. Of course this insight from Goldman Sachs does not inspire interest in post-capitalism as it may just help increase the profits of those already engaged in financialization while also contribute to more automation and job losses. However, beyond its impact on mainstream industries operating with market-based capitalistic models, blockchain, and similar derivatives like ethereum, pose significant opportunities for radically new forms of post-capitalist organizing, which I will discuss at the end of this essay. Throughout this essay I have suggested that the post-capitalist movement seeks to leverage technology to facilitate connecting peers (and local businesses) in the hopes of more equitable distribution of income for makers and creators. The sharing economy broadly seeks to facilitate such peer-to-peer transactions (P2P) usually with an intermediary who owns the underlying technology. It may be enlightening to explore one of the highest profile examples of market spaces in this emerging distributed arena and the vast implications for management that emerge. Uber, a global powerhouse of the technologically-enabled taxi service, raised a recent funding round based on a valuation of $62.5 billion making Uber more valuable than General Motors and any other tech company based in Silicon Valley. Yet, Uber has had well publicized problems with regulators around the globe in part due to incumbent resistance (i.e., mainstream taxi fleets), concerns regarding Uber's bypassing taxi regulations for safety of drivers and passengers, and of course concerns about the low income and lack of benefits afforded to drivers. Uber's success to some extent can be attributed to the lack of innovation from taxi operators around the globe. Uber met a latent need for a location-based, highly technologically-enabled transportation service. Initiatives to create what some refer to as a platform coop, such as those of 645 taxi drivers in Denver, Colorado who came together to offer the same innovative service as Uber but without a global platform owner dictating the terms, certainly challenge the dominance of intermediaries like Uber, resulting in more equitable value capture. Yet platform cooperatives are really just an alternative form of governance operating within and competing amongst capitalist enterprises. However, there is another potential response to Uber, driven by blockchain technology which could truly be disruptive and provides insights as to where this space could go. What if technology could facilitate transactions between two parties without the need for an intermediary that may be inclined to take extractive approaches such as those by Uber and Airbnb? Could you design a system with open source software that is developed by the community which facilitates direct transactions between peers without anyone taking a cut? Instead of cooperatives where members share in the ownership of the enterprise, a DAO actually has no owners and no profit share. In theory, 100 per cent of the income from transactions in a DAO can flow to the provider of services with no intermediary taking their cut. The transactions in a DAO could take the form of local currency, digital currency, national currency or a combination. While there is no taxi DAO formed yet, there is certainly talk of them as an alternative, post-capitalist solution to Uber. Other DAOs have been formed recently, such as openbazaar, which seeks to essentially offer the same type of service as eBay, i.e., an online classified ads without a or So you could offer to that computer I but this time and we could agree on a and I would pay you directly for it without anyone like taking a percentage of the In this DAOs are post-capitalist platforms for to exchange without intermediaries. As can be from the taxi there are several emerging in the towards post-capitalism and alternative currencies that be intriguing to management of these how do industry to from post-capitalist models like DAOs if a DAO emerged to Uber, how would it emerging business models which are between market-based and post-capitalist and DAOs as an form that is to private ownership But when a business model is weak currencies, the incentive to accumulate wealth through the maximum of value of transactions This suggests any returns would The DAO a potential the as does the growing insights from the use of The post-capitalism movement to many regarding the shift towards local cooperatives and further challenge of the importance of nation As in the to it that on many social and is at the local and not the such as the United or even the Therefore, and alternative currencies expressed as a manifestation of the 99 per cent movement, suggest a need for or new for why do what they do and with what In a post-capitalist may be by the have no profit in alternative currencies, and only to enable to transactions whereby all value from the transaction will be by the the value. I find it for that the focus of on the that the valuation of tech start-ups when they an and I exploring how the drive for exits of start-ups and short-term profits of publicly traded companies has to and is the emergence of a new economic alternative currencies, in response to the perceived ills by and investors in publicly traded Yet, I it increasingly to the growing being driven by the we find in market-based capitalism while also some for a future where those who actually create value in a peer-to-peer economy share more in the of their contributions with the help of platforms and a growing of alternative currencies. In of Paris it had already a to launch its own alternative, local currency. If the currency, the is Paris would be the and the first capital to launch and support the of an alternative local currency and perhaps be that this movement may just be getting If money is between the and the as perhaps the growing use of alternative currencies is an of to This essay on with most and several with and If this essay has any on or in the it will be largely due to the the had on its and
Rodney Garratt, Neil Wallace
The value of bitcoin depends upon self‐fulfilling beliefs that are hard to pin down. We demonstrate this for the case where bitcoin is the only form of money in the economy and then generalize the message to the case of multiple bitcoin clones and/or a competing fiat currency. Some aspects of the indeterminacy we describe would no longer hold if bitcoin were an interest‐bearing object. ( JEL D50, E42)