En defensa del dinero público digital

Money is a public good and, as such, requires public management of the monetary and payment system at the national and international levels. Traditional legal categories—such as legal tender—are adapting, sometimes with difficulty, to the digital space, since central bank laws speak of coins, bills, and reserves, but not of digital currencies, tokens, or distributed ledger technology (DLT). The article introduces the trichotomy of digital money: cryptocurrencies, stablecoins, and central bank digital currencies (CBDC), and considers how this trichotomy challenges the traditional notion of monetary sovereignty, which revives the debate between the state theory of money and the social or market theory of money. The article examines in particular when, how, and why digitization came to central banking, and how different jurisdictions are responding when designing CBDC. Finally, the article also examines international aspects, recalling how the idea of a global currency dates back to John Maynard Keynes’ Bancor, and how it would be possible to create a global cryptocurrency that could circulate alongside national or regional cryptocurrencies.