At Cato Unbound: The Private Digital Economy

What if money were private?

One very correct answer is, simply: Money already is private. Sure, there’s the old familiar legal tender of the U.S. government, but the idea of money, and the practices that surround it, are not necessarily tied to the greenback. We all know how money works, and other things can certainly be used in the dollar’s place – if a buyer and a seller agree. From there, if more buyers and sellers agree, the items they use may become a medium of exchange – a class of things held with the intention of passing them along in the market rather than using them directly.

As most of you probably know, that's exactly what's happening right now with bitcoin. But is bitcoin sound money? For that matter, what is it that makes a thing sound money? Gold wasn't sound money just because of its inherent goldiness; it had (and has) distinct, identifiable properties that make it a pretty good money – properties that, say, land, automobiles, or hydrogen conspicuously lack.

How does bitcoin stack up? Will an all-digital private currency one day supplant fiat money? If so, will it be bitcoin or something else? There are alternatives, and some of them are quite successful, albeit less highly publicized in the West. 

Cato's own Jim Harper discusses these issues in his lead essay for July 2013's Cato Unbound. Coming up we have essays by Internet security consultant Dan Kaminsky, tech policy analyst Jerry Brito of the Mercatus Center, and Ph.D. candidate Chuck Moulton, who is writing his dissertation on transitions from unsound to relatively sound monetary systems.