ABSTRACT
Most academic analyses on the ‘money’ status of cryptocurrency are performed either formalistically or superficially. The paper on the subject and the unity of conclusions are suggestive of this fact. These assessments religiously ask whether cryptocurrencies meet ‘definitive’ standards of ‘money-ness’ in monetary economics. They would mostly resolve that cryptocurrencies do not. This article examines misassumptions about the fundamental nature of money manifest in the approach of these assessments and makes a case for a more comprehensive examination of the money status of cryptocurrency. By extension, it leverages the conversation on the money status of cryptocurrency as a launch pad to conduct long overdue reevaluations of our understanding of moneyness. In so doing, it explores, through economic, legal, and ontological accounts resurfaced by the conversation on cryptocurrency, the gaps between what we know about money and what we think we know about money. The paper argues for what money is and is not, reconsiders the money status of cryptocurrency, and broadly examines the future of moneyness, borrowing lessons from the digital revolution offered by Bitcoin.
Okonkwo, Vincent, Is Money Money? Digital Currencies, Moneyness, and the Future of the Legal Fiction of Money (November 1, 2022).
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