Identity is the New Money

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David Birch. Identity is the New Money

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This book is dedicated to the late Professor Glyn Davies, whose outstanding book A History of Money from Ancient Times to the Present Day and speech at the first ever Digital Money Forum in London in 1997 together formed the bedrock for my understanding of the relationship between money, monetary policy and technological change

Is the immediate jewel of their souls.

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Innovations in payment technology must not be confused with the basic construction of a monetary system.3 Ours is actually a relatively recent invention. It is barely forty, and having something of a mid-life crisis. When Richard Nixon ended the convertibility of the US dollar into gold in 1971, we entered a new world of fiat currency. From that day on, dollars have been backed by the full faith and credit of the United States and nothing more. All the world’s currencies are now ‘pure manifestations of sovereignty conjured by governments’.4 That’s why the talk of ‘virtual currency’ is misplaced: all currency is virtual.

More than a decade ago, Michael Klein, then Chief Economist of the Royal Dutch/Shell group of companies, said that monetary regimes have changed around once per generation.5 They aren’t going to stop now. It is time for another regime change.

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