IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/mes/ijpoec/v48y2019i2p127-152.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Cryptocurrencies and Blockchain: Opportunities and Limits of a New Monetary Regime

Author

Listed:
  • Léo Malherbe
  • Matthieu Montalban
  • Nicolas Bédu
  • Caroline Granier

Abstract

Cryptocurrency innovations such as Bitcoin raise the question of the possible transformation of the monetary regime and how it would operate. The blockchain technology underlying Bitcoin is said to be “trustless” because it has been designed to avoid a “trusted third party.” Drawing on the institutionalist approach of Aglietta and Orléan emphasizing the importance of trust in money and the monetary system, we show that Bitcoin is characterized by: (1) methodical trust through the existence of an objective proof of payment; (2) hierarchical trust due to the concentration in the mining process; and (3) ethical trust organized around the rejection of banks and the state, although the early ethical commitment is unstable. In other words, trust is now materialized in a form of technical institution, the blockchain. However, Bitcoin cannot be used as everyday money as it would bring about a deflationist and dysfunctional monetary regime, as well as high transaction costs. Some other cryptocurrencies could lead to interesting transformations of the monetary regime if they were to provide new forms of sovereignty, avoid a design based on a fixed monetary supply, or if central banks decided to back them.

Suggested Citation

  • Léo Malherbe & Matthieu Montalban & Nicolas Bédu & Caroline Granier, 2019. "Cryptocurrencies and Blockchain: Opportunities and Limits of a New Monetary Regime," International Journal of Political Economy, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 48(2), pages 127-152, April.
    • Handle: RePEc:mes:ijpoec:v:48:y:2019:i:2:p:127-152
    DOI: 10.1080/08911916.2019.1624320
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/08911916.2019.1624320
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1080/08911916.2019.1624320?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to look for a different version below or search for a different version of it.

    Other versions of this item:

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Thomas Marmefelt, 2024. "Central Bank Digital Currencies and International Crises: Toward an Authoritarian International Monetary Order?," Politics and Governance, Cogitatio Press, vol. 12.
    2. Ana Cristina O. Siqueira & Benson Honig & Sandra Mariano & Joysi Moraes, 2020. "A Commons Strategy for Promoting Entrepreneurship and Social Capital: Implications for Community Currencies, Cryptocurrencies, and Value Exchange," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 166(4), pages 711-726, November.
    3. Teck Ming Tan & Jari Salo, 2023. "Ethical Marketing in the Blockchain-Based Sharing Economy: Theoretical Integration and Guiding Insights," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 183(4), pages 1113-1140, April.
    4. Patel, Ritesh & Migliavacca, Milena & Oriani, Marco E., 2022. "Blockchain in banking and finance: A bibliometric review," Research in International Business and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 62(C).
    5. Cavallaro, Matteo & Mathieu, Alban, 2024. "Beyond the veil: Mapping cryptocurrencies' ecosystem," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 94(C).
    6. Tyc Aneta & Siuciński Robert, 2020. "Cryptocurrencies: Some Remarks from the Perspective of Polish Employment and Tax Law," TalTech Journal of European Studies, Sciendo, vol. 10(1), pages 22-39, June.
    7. Aniruddha Dutta & Saket Kumar & Meheli Basu, 2020. "A Gated Recurrent Unit Approach to Bitcoin Price Prediction," JRFM, MDPI, vol. 13(2), pages 1-16, February.
    8. Pardis Roozkhosh & Alireza Pooya, 2024. "Dynamic Analysis of Bitcoin Price Under Market News and Sentiments and Government Support Policies," Computational Economics, Springer;Society for Computational Economics, vol. 64(2), pages 1163-1198, August.
    9. Dorfleitner, Gregor & Muck, Franziska & Scheckenbach, Isabel, 2021. "Blockchain applications for climate protection: A global empirical investigation," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 149(C).

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:mes:ijpoec:v:48:y:2019:i:2:p:127-152. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Chris Longhurst (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.tandfonline.com/MIJP20 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.