Futuristic Money

I have decided to share my views on Money, and Finance in this forum. The world is undergoing enormous amount of change in digital technology, robotic AI's, geopolitical landscape, and financial structures. Having worked as a central banker, and professor of monetary economics and finance, I have reflected on the trajectory of finance, currency and economic issues that I would like to present it as a discourse in this forum, with the hope to ensue a discussion that would help our understanding some critical issues facing the world at large. 

As the following chart shows  Bitcoin that had surged from from a level of close to $7,800 in November 2017   to a level  above $19000  in mid-December plummeted to  a level just below $7000 in early February and at the time of writing recovered somewhat to a level above $10500.  One would like to investigate the reason behind these wild gyrations.

• Are cryptocurrencies money, if not how can they become money?
• What would be the impact of blockchain technology and related technological advances for the financial infrastructure both globally and nationally, i.e., Central Banks, Financial Institutions, IMF, World Bank, etc. ?
• How the structure of Finance would look like over the next twenty years, when the impact of  integration of Superintelligent AIs, Internet of Things, Smart Materials, Big Data, and so on reaches a critical take-off stage?
• What would be the impact of these advances on communities, societies, and nation states?     

The World Economic Forum’s analysis in 2016  has yielded six key findings regarding the implications of distributed ledger technology (DLT) on the future of financial services.

1. DLT has great potential to drive simplicity and efficiency through the establishment of new financial services infrastructure and processes 
2. DLT is not a panacea; instead it should be viewed as one of many technologies that will form the foundation of next‐ generation financial services infrastructure 
3. Applications of DLT will differ by use case, each leveraging the technology in different ways for a diverse range of benefits 
4. Digital Identity is a critical enabler to broaden applications to new verticals; Digital Fiat (legal tender), along with other emerging capabilities, has the ability to amplify benefits 
5. The most impactful DLT applications will require deep collaboration between incumbents, innovators and regulators, adding complexity and delaying implementation 
6. New financial services infrastructure built on DLT will redraw processes and call into question orthodoxies that are foundational to today’s business models  

Speaking on February 16th  with CNBC at the Munich Security Conference the White House cybersecurity coordinator and special assistant to the president Rob Royce provided a grim assessment of  the need for legislation around cryptocurrencies. This is  amidst of a current flurry of discussions on cryptosecurity issues. Royce expressed his concerns about the criminal usage of bitcoin, and maintained that he considered the irreversibility of bitcoin transactions - a characteristic of the how the network functions - to be troubling. "We are worried. There are benefits to the bitcoin concept - digital cash, digital currencies," he said. "But at the same time, if you look at the way bitcoin works after there is a criminal act that takes place, you can't rewind the clock and take back that currency." "We haven't figured that out yet," he added, "so it's a problem."

I would try to show that we need to have a holistic and fundamental approach in discussing such issues. I must confess that I am not sure if this forum is the right one for discussing these issues, but I am prepared to give it a try? I am also concern about the uploading of   my graphs and charts . Although I have used the particular Icon and  the address of URL I am still not seeing the chart. Perhaps it will appear  on the published version when I post this.  I plan to write two article per month.