IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/nbr/nberwo/22238.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Digital Currencies, Decentralized Ledgers, and the Future of Central Banking

Author

Listed:
  • Max Raskin
  • David Yermack

Abstract

Central banking in an age of digital currencies is a fast-developing topic in monetary economics. Algorithmic digital currencies such as bitcoin appear to be viable competitors to central bank fiat currency, and their presence in the marketplace may pressure central banks to pursue tighter monetary policy. More interestingly, the blockchain technology behind digital currencies has the potential to improve central banks’ payment and clearing operations, and possibly to serve as a platform from which central banks might launch their own digital currencies. A sovereign digital currency could have profound implications for the banking system, narrowing the relationship between citizens and central banks and removing the need for the public to keep deposits in fractional reserve commercial banks. Debates over the wisdom of these policies have led to a revival of interest in classical monetary economics.

Suggested Citation

  • Max Raskin & David Yermack, 2016. "Digital Currencies, Decentralized Ledgers, and the Future of Central Banking," NBER Working Papers 22238, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:22238
    Note: ME
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.nber.org/papers/w22238.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Thomas Kim, 2015. "The Predecessors of Bitcoin and Their Implications for the Prospect of Virtual Currencies," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 10(4), pages 1-18, April.
    2. John F. Nash Jr., 2002. "Ideal Money," Southern Economic Journal, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 69(1), pages 4-11, July.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Sha Wang & Jean-Philippe Vergne, 2017. "Buzz Factor or Innovation Potential: What Explains Cryptocurrencies’ Returns?," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 12(1), pages 1-17, January.
    2. Garrison Hongyu Song, 2023. "Valuation of Cryptocurrency Without Intrinsic Value: A Promise of Future Payment System and Implications to De-dollarization," Eastern Economic Journal, Palgrave Macmillan;Eastern Economic Association, vol. 49(2), pages 221-248, April.
    3. Francisco Javier García-Corral & José Antonio Cordero-García & Jaime de Pablo-Valenciano & Juan Uribe-Toril, 2022. "A bibliometric review of cryptocurrencies: how have they grown?," Financial Innovation, Springer;Southwestern University of Finance and Economics, vol. 8(1), pages 1-31, December.
    4. Pawan Kumar Singh & Alok Kumar Pandey & S. C. Bose, 2023. "A new grey system approach to forecast closing price of Bitcoin, Bionic, Cardano, Dogecoin, Ethereum, XRP Cryptocurrencies," Quality & Quantity: International Journal of Methodology, Springer, vol. 57(3), pages 2429-2446, June.
    5. Kim, Thomas, 2017. "On the transaction cost of Bitcoin," Finance Research Letters, Elsevier, vol. 23(C), pages 300-305.
    6. Juneman Abraham & Dian Utami Sutiksno & Nuning Kurniasih & Ari Warokka, 2019. "Acceptance and Penetration of Bitcoin: The Role of Psychological Distance and National Culture," SAGE Open, , vol. 9(3), pages 21582440198, July.
    7. Claus Dierksmeier & Peter Seele, 2018. "Cryptocurrencies and Business Ethics," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 152(1), pages 1-14, September.
    8. Zargar, Faisal Nazir & Kumar, Dilip, 2019. "Long range dependence in the Bitcoin market: A study based on high-frequency data," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 515(C), pages 625-640.
    9. Jan Lánský, 2016. "Analysis of Cryptocurrencies Price Development," Acta Informatica Pragensia, Prague University of Economics and Business, vol. 2016(2), pages 118-137.
    10. Zargar, Faisal Nazir & Kumar, Dilip, 2019. "Informational inefficiency of Bitcoin: A study based on high-frequency data," Research in International Business and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 47(C), pages 344-353.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • E42 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Money and Interest Rates - - - Monetary Sytsems; Standards; Regimes; Government and the Monetary System
    • E51 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Monetary Policy, Central Banking, and the Supply of Money and Credit - - - Money Supply; Credit; Money Multipliers
    • E52 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Monetary Policy, Central Banking, and the Supply of Money and Credit - - - Monetary Policy
    • E58 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Monetary Policy, Central Banking, and the Supply of Money and Credit - - - Central Banks and Their Policies
    • G21 - Financial Economics - - Financial Institutions and Services - - - Banks; Other Depository Institutions; Micro Finance Institutions; Mortgages

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:nbr:nberwo:22238. 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.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with 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: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/nberrus.html .

    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.