Читать книгу CryptoDad - J. Christopher Giancarlo - Страница 12

A second observation is that these aging financial and regulatory systems are struggling to adapt to the next wave of digitization that I and some others call the “Internet of Value.”²

The first wave was the Internet of Information. Wikipedia is an example and emblem of that first wave: a massive decentralized, online reference authority composed collaboratively by volunteers. That initial wave took information written, owned, and controlled by elite publishers like Encyclopedia Britannica and democratized it, rendering it easily accessible at a keystroke, anytime, anywhere, and for free.

That first Internet wave was superseded by another: the “Internet of Things.” Thanks to this wave, seemingly every place we shop and dwell, everything we wear and drive, and every device we engage with is connected to the Internet.

We are now on the cusp of the Internet's next wave: the Internet of Value.

As remarkable as were the earlier waves, the Internet of Value will be an even deeper transformation of our economic selves than the earlier waves combined. This wave will do to currency, financial instruments, and economic activity what the Internet of Information did to knowledge: reduce costs, increase speed, transcend barriers, improve accessibility, enhance certainty, and decrease bottlenecks to instantaneous transactions across the globe.

In this wave, things of value—such as contracts for energy, agricultural, and mineral commodities; stock certificates, land records, and property titles; cultural assets like music and art; and personal assets like birth records and drivers licenses—will be stored, managed, transacted, and moved about in a secure, private way from person to person, without third-party intermediaries. This next wave of the Internet will shift the medium of trust from large centrally managed institutions to person-to-person digital handshakes powered and secured by cryptography, tokenization, and shared ledgers carried across a network of personal computers and smartphones. Think of the ability to send money or confer ownership over property by mere text message without having to go through an intermediary—a powerful bank or a credit card company—to authenticate who you are and the person you are sending it to. The opportunities will be no less transformative than what Uber did to mobility, Airbnb did to lodging, and Amazon did to commerce. We are only in the middle innings of what will be a decades-long digital revolution.

Ask yourself: When was the last time you mailed a stamped letter rather than sent an email? When was the last time you pasted photos into an album instead of stored them on your mobile phone? When was the last time you played a CD, cassette tape, or vinyl LP rather than listened to Pandora or Spotify? If the Internet could transform letter writing, photography, and music in one generation, it is naïve to think the Internet will not do the same to financial services and money. In a few years' time, writing a paper check will be as archaic as sending film to Kodak to be developed. So will sending money by wire transfer—or even via mobile apps like Venmo or Square Cash—since all these ostensibly “digital” methods still rely on costly intermediaries, such as banks and credit-card companies. Just over the horizon is a world in which we will soon send things of value directly to the recipient, mobile device to mobile device, without any third-party needing to assist—or take a cut.

Nowhere will the Internet have a more dramatic impact than in the realm of money. Sir Jon Cunliffe, the widely respected deputy governor of the Bank of England, once commented to me that, every several generations, society re-asks the question: “What is money?” He thinks this latest Internet wave is prompting society to ask that question once again.

He's right. Society has been questioning the nature of money for over a decade now. Bitcoin³—rising from the ashes of the last financial crisis in 2008—was the first digital asset. Since its advent, the private sector has launched thousands of budding, non-sovereign cryptocurrencies of lesser or greater promise.

Clearly, the private sector is way ahead of governments and central banks in exploring digital money. But lately, governments are starting to react. Most of the world's central banks are now taking a serious look at a sovereign form of cryptocurrency, called central bank digital currency.

The world as we know it today is one of competing currency zones in which monetary systems, banking, and foreign accounts are generally oriented to one reserve currency or another. Think of the US dollar zone and the “Eurozone.” As I will explain in this book, those old currency zones may well be replaced tomorrow by widely networked and integrated national digital currency zones. There likely will be a Chinese digital currency zone and perhaps a Digital Euro zone. In these zones, central bank digital currencies will be networked through distributed ledgers with all important financial functions and transactions—including retail credit and business lending, domestic and global payments, securities and commodities trading, and central bank monetary policy—under the control and watchful eye and sway of powerful central banks. The increase in speed, efficiency, and velocity of money could turbocharge economic growth. Such centralized economic and financial control for major world economies would be unprecedented. It would be the utmost expression of the Internet of Value: fully-integrated, networked, digital economies.