The Future of Money & Decentralized Finance (DeFi) - Token-Economy-Book/EnglishOriginal GitHub Wiki

In a market economy based on division of labor, the role of money issued by governmental bodies is to facilitate the exchange of goods and services. Money makes economic exchange much more efficient than gift economies and barter economies, avoiding the inefficiencies of such systems like the “coincidence of wants” problem. [^1]

There is a widespread misconception that Bitcoin and native blockchain tokens are currencies comparable to fiat currencies such as EUR, USD, or YEN, which are issued by central banks of nation states. Referring to tokens as “currencies” sparks a lot of controversy and is not entirely true. While native protocol tokens and some asset tokens have certain properties of money, they have more resemblance with commodity money or representative money, but not so much with modern fiat money. The biggest challenge that we face when we try to explain or talk about cryptographic tokens is that we are trying to explain new phenomena with old terminology. Using old terminology to explain new phenomena does not always do justice to the full range of possibilities this new technology has to offer. To be able to draw similarities and make accurate distinctions, it is important to understand the historic evolution of money, as well as the purpose and functionalities of money.

The primary purpose of money is to facilitate an economic exchange of goods and services within and between economies. It makes economic exchange much more efficient than gift economies and barter economies, avoiding the inefficiencies of such systems like the “coincidence of wants” problem. The coincidence of wants problem refers to the improbability that two parties, each of which own different goods, can agree on a deal, unless each party wants the specific good the other party offers, at the same time. To mitigate this problem, one can agree on a universal asset of value as a medium of exchange. Shells, precious metals, or livestock were first used as such assets to counter the inefficiencies of a barter economy. Over time, however, more neutral artificial mediums of exchange developed, which we started to refer to as money. Money has proved to be an efficient technology for intermediating the exchange of goods and services, providing a tool to compare values of dissimilar objects.

Money needs to serve as a medium of exchange, store of value, and unit of account in which debt can be denominated. It provides a basis for market prices, which are necessary for an efficient accounting system and the basis for the formulation of commercial agreements. A currency is a system of money of a closed group of people, like a nation state, often serving as legal tender within that nation. If a currency has the status of legal tender, it is a unit with which debts are denominated in a nation state by its legal system. As legal tender, it represents an accepted way to meet a financial obligation as a result of economic activities and settle a debt within the geographical boundaries of that nation state. However, the exact definition of a legal tender varies along jurisdictions.

Properties of Money

Properties of money include liquidity, fungibility, durability, portability, cognizability, and stability. Money also needs some inbuilt anti-counterfeiting measures to avoid forging.

Liquidity refers to the fact that the substrate that represents money must be easily tradable, at low transaction costs.

Divisibility and portability refer to the fact that assets must be easily transportable. While a barrel of oil is divisible and durable, oil isn’t easily portable in barrels. Comparable to a barrel of oil, a bar of gold is equally durable but easier to transfer. However, divisibility of such a gold bar, the process of melting and minting it into smaller units, comes at a high cost.

Fungibility refers to the fact that units of money are equal. Every token of that currency must be treated equally, even if it has been used for illegal purposes by previous owners. This is to protect the rights of innocent recipients of those tokens, who might not have known of the illegal activities. Fungibility is not guaranteed if a token can be censored or blacklisted based on the behavior of previous token holders.

Durability refers to the ability to withstand repeated use so it can serve as a store of value. Money must have the ability to be reliably saved, stored, and retrieved, and to be predictably usable as a medium of exchange when retrieved. This means that the substrate of that currency should not easily vanish, decay, or rot. Metals or durable foods like wheat, flour, and sugar have high durability, and were therefore often used as commodity money; they were considered precious to almost all members of society, and to be a workaround to the “coincidence of wants” problem.

Stability refers to the fact that value should not fluctuate too much; otherwise, it will not be able to serve as a reliable store of value. Without a reliable store of value, economic planning of individual households and companies, but also of governments, will be difficult. High volatility is counterproductive for trust in future prices, salaries, debts, and therefore trade. Inflation reduces the value of money and, as a result, it’s ability to function as a store of value. If price levels rise, each unit of currency buys fewer goods and services. Deflation, on the other hand, decreases general price levels of goods and services.

Cognizability refers to the fact that the value of a currency token must be easily identifiable.

Types of Money {#types-of-money}

Different types of money have evolved over time. In modern economies, the dominant type of money is fiat money. Prior to the existence of modern day fiat currencies, commodity money and representative money were in widespread use.

Commodity money is any object which has an intrinsic and standardized value in a local economy. The value of such commodity money derives from the commodity of which it is made: gold coins, silver coins, and other rare metal coins, salt, barley, animal pelts, cigarettes, or ramen packs. Before smoking was banned in prisons, cigarettes were used among others as an underground currency, but were then replaced by tuna cans, instant ramen packs, and similar durable and portable objects of high value for prisoners. The price is determined by comparing the perceived value of the commodity to the perceived value of other products.

Representative money, on the other hand, is a medium of exchange that represents something of value but has little or no value on its own. It’s a claim on a commodity: gold or silver certificates, or paper money and coins backed by gold reserves. Asset tokens also represent a physical good and could be classified as commodity money.

Fiat money is established by government regulation, similar to any check or note of debt. Fiat money, like the coins and bills we use today, do not have an intrinsic physical value like a commodity. Their face value, which is denominated on the banknote, is greater than their material substance. “It derives its value by being declared by a government to be legal tender... It must be accepted as a form of payment within the boundaries of the country, for all debts, public and private… The money supply of a country consists of currency (banknotes and coins) and, depending on the particular definition used, one or more types of bank money (the balances held in checking accounts, savings accounts, and other types of bank accounts). Bank money, which consists only of records (mostly computerized in modern banking), forms by far the largest part of broad money in developed countries.”^2 In modern economies, most money in circulation is not in the form of bills and coins anymore, but rather an entry in the digital ledgers of a bank, managing money saved in current accounts, checking accounts, and in the form of other financial instruments. The assigned value results from the fact that governments can use their power to enforce the value of a fiat currency.

Fiat currencies have evolved over time. While banknotes and coins were pegged to scarce commodities like gold and other precious metals in the past, the gold standard was abolished. Hardly any currencies today are pegged to commodities. Central banks influence the money supply with monetary policy, by issuing more or less money by issuing credit, as they see fit. However, many economists would argue that fiat currencies, in most stable economies, are backed by the collective value of the underlying economic activity of a nation, measured as its gross domestic product (GDP).

Money or Not?

While Bitcoin was originally designed with the purpose to create P2P money without banks, the underlying P2P payment network has proven to be a gateway to a new type of economic value creation. The Bitcoin protocol is designed to incentivize individual contributions to a collective good, a public and permissionless P2P payment network. Using the vocabulary of a computer scientist, the protocol hereby provides an operating system for a new type of economy. Using the vocabulary of a political scientist, the protocol represents the constitutional foundation for a distributed Internet tribe collectively maintaining that network, a group of voluntary participants that transcends the geographical boundaries of nation states. Bitcoin tokens can be considered as the legal tender of the Bitcoin network; Bitcoin tokens are the only accepted form of payment within the network. BTC is needed to pay for transaction costs in the network. They cannot be paid with fiat money like USD, EUR, or other cryptographic tokens. The price of the network token should reflect the stability of the payment network, similar to how the value of fiat currencies should reflect the economic activities of a country.

Protocol tokens have certain properties of money, however, they seem to have more similarities to commodity money or representative money than to fiat money. The production process is distributed (similar to real life commodities) and the price is determined by supply and demand, thus subject to fluctuation (much like the price of tokens, which are determined by the supply and demand on exchanges). As opposed to fiat currencies, no single centralized entity like governments and central banks can influence the price or the accessibility of protocol tokens. Control is therefore distributed, much like with commodities, where no single government or other entity controls the mining of gold, silver, oil, etc. Who has how much control in the system is subject to the token creation rules defined in the protocol. The token creation and supply policy (monetary policy of the network) is the point of centralization that can only be changed by majority consensus of all network actors in the form of a software upgrade. The protocol therefore has functions of a central bank. Potential “central bank smart contracts” could account for more adaptive monetary policy than the one Bitcoin network provides. Such trends to make the monetary policy of a token more adaptive and stable are emerging (read more: Part 3 - Stable Tokens).

While distributed production and control applies to protocol tokens, it is not necessarily true for application tokens. Application tokens or sidechain tokens are often issued by one centralized entity, a private company or a foundation. Tokens that are pegged to an asset, or a security, could also have similarities to commodity money. As opposed to commodities that are already being traded on legacy systems, asset tokens might provide much higher liquidity due to the frictionless settlement infrastructure a distributed ledger provides. This could be especially true for asset tokens that represent real life assets that currently do not have high market liquidity, or goods that hardly have a market at all. Asset tokens make the underlying asset more tradable, while the asset itself is still illiquid. Tokenization of assets can convert previously “non-bankable funds” into “bankable funds.” Non-bankable funds are assets that are not accepted as a method of payment in a bank. Bankable funds are forms of payment that are accepted at financial institutions and easily liquidated into local currencies such as checks and money orders. They can be converted into cash with short notice and are generally accepted by merchants as a method of payment. In light of potential widespread tokenization, any tokenized asset could receive the status of a “bankable fund.” Such developments could make any tokenized asset a potential medium of exchange. However, as of today, most tokens do not fulfill some important properties of money: stability, and to some extent, also fungibility. Furthermore, usability and scalability are also entry barriers to potential mass adoption.

  • Stability: Bitcoin and similar blockchain protocols simply regulate and limit the amount of tokens minted over time. Their protocols do not provide a sophisticated economic algorithm that guarantees price stability; their exchange rate is determined by supply and demand on markets and is often highly volatile. While fiat currencies of most modern economies also have fluctuating exchange rates that are determined on foreign exchange markets, national institutions can perform currency intervention via foreign exchange markets or other currency manipulation. In such an intervention process, governments or central banks buy and sell currency in exchange for their own currency to manipulate the market price. They do that in order to avoid excessive short-term volatility, which makes economic actions hard to plan. Short-term volatility also tends to erode market confidence, generating extra costs and reducing the profits of firms, forcing investors to make investments in foreign financial assets. With the emergence of hedging options, stable tokens (read more: Part 3 - Stable Tokens), and atomic swaps (read more: Part 3 - Decentralized Exchanges & Atomic Swaps) on the rise, price volatility might be a non-issue in the future. However, it is unclear whether, how, and when these solutions will gain traction.

  • Privacy: Most tokens today have no inbuilt privacy by design. This makes them non-fungible, and therefore non-usable as a medium of exchange. For a token to potentially serve as a medium of exchange, it needs to be fully fungible. If you can taint addresses, as in the case of Bitcoin, the token will not serve as a medium of exchange in the long run. Even though Bitcoin addresses are pseudonymous, simple chain analysis of the ledger can link the data flow from a particular address with other data points outside the blockchain, and identify who is behind a Bitcoin address. While this requires time and effort, and access to other data points, it is not unfeasible. Potential traceability destroys the fungibility of a token (read more: Part 3 - Privacy Tokens).

  • Scalability: Current settlement infrastructures of public blockchain networks are secure but not very scalable. Alternative distributed ledger solutions have better scalability but tend to be more centralized. This is due to the “scalability trilemma,” the trade-off between security, scalability, and decentralization. While scalability is still a big issue, many solutions are already on the horizon (read more: Annex - Scalability).

  • Usability: Wallet usability also still has a long way to go. Most current wallets support only a handful of tokens, some only one. This means that you often need a separate wallet application for each token, or type of tokens. Furthermore, key management is a nightmare: if you lose your key, you lose access to your funds. If that issue is not resolved, hosted wallets in the custody of trusted third parties, such as online exchanges, will become mainstream. This, however, would undermine the efforts of autonomous asset management in the sense of P2P electronic cash, as originally envisioned by Satoshi Nakamoto.

Decentralized Finance (DeFi): Toward a Digital Barter Economy

Cryptographic tokens represent a new heterogenous asset class that can fulfill a diverse range of economic functions. Their frictionless issuance and settlement process could potentially convert many assets or access rights of the real world into “bankable funds.” Tokenizing economic activities, from real assets to digital assets and all types of access rights, could impact the role of central bank money as a geographical monopolist providing a medium of exchange, once mass adoption of the Web3 manifests and necessary network effects kick in. The speed at which these tokens are being issued is an indicator that a new tokenized economic system is emerging (read more: Part 2 - Tokens & Part 4 - Token Use Cases). Such tokenization of the real economy could gradually lead to the merging of the money system, with the financial system and the real economy.

A range of easy-to-use decentralized financial (DeFi) applications have been emerging beyond simple payments networks that facilitate frictional and P2P asset issuance, trading, lending and hedging. The term “DeFi” encompasses any decentralized and permissionless financial application that builds on top of distributed ledgers, including privacy-preserving payment systems (privacy tokens), stability preserving payment systems (stable tokens), P2P exchanges (token exchanges), P2P fundraising (token sales), and P2P credit and lending (decentralized lending), P2P insurance, and a growing list of P2P derivatives. These Web3-based DeFi applications could, potentially, open traditional financial services to the general public, mitigating current inefficiencies of financial markets.

The current financial system, even in it’s electronic form, requires a range of intermediary services for (i) mitigating counterparty risk, (ii) market making, and (iii) securing funds from being stolen. This is a result of the server-centric nature of the current Internet. In a tokenized economy, however, distributed ledgers and user-centric identity solutions could increase ecosystem transparency, accountability, and market efficiency:

  • Due to the public nature of distributed ledgers, DeFi applications are designed to be globally accessible by anyone around the world with an Internet connection and a Web3 wallet. Once the smart contract is deployed, DeFi applications self-execute with little institutional intervention except for code upgrades, bug fixes, and dispute resolution.

  • If users choose “non-custodial” wallet solutions, they remain in possession of the private keys and in full control of the funds, potentially disintermediating many financial services that currently provide services to mitigate counterparty risk, act as market makers, or secure funds from being stolen.

  • Any smart contract code can be audited by anyone and is subject to collective loophole fixing, which is the basis for the rapidly evolving DeFi ecosystem.

  • All token transactions are publicly verifiable, reducing market friction and increasing the interoperability of financial services. As a result of such interoperability, DeFi applications can be built in a modular way, which is why many refer to them as “money legos.”

Combining various DeFi solutions, such as “stable tokens,” “decentralized exchanges,” and “decentralized lending,” can produce completely new products available to retail investors and the general public. Any private person could, in such a setup, tokenize their real assets and use them as collateral for P2P lending solutions without bureaucracy by using a combination of simple DeFi applications (read more: Part 3 - Decentralized Lending). Such new services could, in the long run, change the dynamics of our economic system and contribute to the merging of the real economy and the financial system, making their distinction increasingly impossible.

While such “money legos” are quickly emerging, they are still nascent and often prone to exploits and attacks as a result of unintended programming mistakes and malicious hacks. The governance/business logic of the underlying smart contracts needs extensive auditing and bug fixing, especially in light of a growing and complex network of interoperable DeFi applications (read more: Chapter 3 - Token Lending). Furthermore, most DeFi applications today are built for developers, not for users. Their current lack of usability undermines decentralization efforts. However, once the user experience improves, and user-centric identities become mainstream, any non-bankable funds could be managed by a public infrastructure and converted into a financial product that can be easily used as collateral or traded with a simple mobile wallet where you are in full control of all your assets and all your data (read more: Part 1 - User-Centric Identities).

Many economists remain skeptical that cryptographic tokens can permanently replace conventional currencies since: (i) There are strong network externalities that favor existing conventional currencies; (ii) The lack of sophisticated token supply rules leading to socially desirable stability and liquidity of tokenized economies. Furthermore, (iii) from a classic economic perspective, it seems impossible to pre-specify socially optimal “lender-of-last resort” rules in a smart contract. Lender-of-last resort refers to a safety-net institution, usually provided by central banks, to reduce the risk of a lack of liquidity of financial systems as a result of financial panics and bank runs. It represents government-guaranteed liquidity to financial institutions. The lack of such a lender-of-last resort makes financial systems susceptible to financial crises and systemic panics.

I would like to argue that we are still in the very early stages of a tokenized economy. I am confident that economic methods and practices will find their way into the smart contracts and token governance rules of future token systems. We can already see this happening in the cases of algorithmic stable tokens. Furthermore, many central banks are currently looking into or have already started to tokenize central bank currencies (Central Bank Digital Currencies) and make them distributed ledger compatible (read more: Part 3 - Stable Tokens). New legal frameworks will be needed as these new structures transition from an early innovation phase to a more mature infrastructure phase.

One important bottleneck will be the emergence of multi-token capability of wallets and better key recovery solutions (read more: Part 1 - Token Security, Wallets). Another bottleneck will be overcoming the challenge of token trading through the inefficiency of centralized exchanges. Once P2P swapping of tokens matures and is adopted by wallet software, anyone will be able to exchange any token P2P, wallet to wallet, without any intermediary (read more: Part 3 - Trading Tokens, Atomic Swaps & DEX). In such a future scenario, powered by AI and DeFi applications, atomic swaps could potentially introduce a tokenized barter economy powered by global trading platforms, without the coincidence-of-wants problem we face today.

Chapter Summary

In a market economy based on division of labor and money issued by governmental bodies, the role of money is to facilitate the exchange of goods and services. It makes economic exchange much more efficient than gift economies and barter economies, avoiding the inefficiencies of such systems like the “coincidence of wants” problem.

Money proved to be an efficient tool for comparing values of different goods and services. It has different functions and properties. It acts as a (i) medium of exchange; (ii) measure of value and unit of account in which debt can be denominated; and as a (iii) store of value.

Properties of money include (i) liquidity, (ii) fungibility, (iii) durability, (iv) portability, (v) cognizability, and (vi) stability. It also needs some (vii) inbuilt anti-counterfeiting measures to avoid forging. Different types of money have evolved over time.

In modern economies, the dominant type of money is so-called (i) fiat currency. Prior to the existence of modern day fiat currencies, we had (ii) commodity money and (iii) representative money.

Protocol tokens like Bitcoin or Ether are needed to pay for transactions in their respective networks. They represent the “legal tender” of the network, which is needed to pay for network services. The Bitcoin network is a public infrastructure for “P2P remittances.” Transaction fees for these remittances need to be paid with BTC tokens.

As of today, most tokens do not fulfill one of the most important properties of money: stability of value, and to some extent, also fungibility. Usability and scalability are other entry barriers to potential mass adoption.

Cryptographic tokens represent a new heterogenous asset class that can fulfill a diverse range of economic functions. Their frictionless issuance and settlement process could potentially convert many assets or access rights of the real world into “bankable funds.”

It is likely that tokenizing economic activities, from real assets to digital assets and all types of access rights, will impact the role of central bank money as a geographical monopolist providing a medium of exchange in the long run. ~ Cryptographic tokens represent a new heterogenous asset class that can fulfill a diverse range of economic functions. Their frictionless issuance and settlement process could potentially convert many assets or access rights of the real world into “bankable funds.”

Tokenizing economic activities, from real assets to digital assets and all types of access rights, could impact the role of central bank money as a geographical monopolist providing a medium of exchange, once mass adoption of the Web3 manifests and necessary network effects kick in. Such tokenization of the real economy could also lead to the merging of the financial stems with the real economy.

The term “DeFi” encompasses any decentralized and permissionless financial application that builds on top of distributed ledgers, including privacy-preserving payment systems (privacy tokens), stability preserving payment systems (stable tokens), P2P exchanges (token exchanges), P2P fundraising (token sales), and P2P credit and lending (decentralized lending), P2P insurance, and a growing list of P2P derivatives. These Web3-based DeFi applications could, potentially, open traditional financial services to the general public, mitigating current inefficiencies of financial markets.

Combining various DeFi solutions, such as “stable tokens,” “decentralized exchanges,” and “decentralized lending,” can produce completely new products available to retail investors and the general public and could, in the long run, change the dynamics of our economic system and contribute to the merging of the real economy and the financial system, making their distinction increasingly impossible.

Chapter References & Further Reading

Footnotes

[^1]: This chapter is based on texts that have been published before, originally in: Voshmgir, Shermin: "Token Economy — The Future of Currencies?", Medium blog, Jan 31, 2018: https://medium.com/crypto3conomics/token-economy-the-future-of-currencies-d26487fd3945. Variations of this text have been published in following publication: https://www.creative.nrw.de/fileadmin/user_upload/Pdf/180423_HIDDENVALUES_148x210_DIGITAL.pdf https://www.derstandard.at/story/2000081901719/warum-bitcoin-keine-waehrung-ist Sinner, Martin; Harlinghausen, Curt Simon; Voshmgir, Shermin; Solmecke,Christian; Smith, Monika: “ Business Purpose Design Business Purpose Design”, 2018 Santiago Berlin GmbH

Token Economy: How the Web3 reinvents the Internet.
Second edition, first amended printing, Nov 2020. The first edition was published by BlockchainHub Berlin https://blockchainhub.net in June 2019 under the title “Token Economy: How Blockchain & Smart contracts revolutionize the Economy” and had two amended editions.

Author: Shermin Voshmgir
BibTeX: @book{voshmgir2020token, title={Token Economy: How the Web3 reinvents the Internet}, author={Voshmgir, Shermin}, year={2020}, publisher={Token Kitchen} }

LICENCE: Copyleft 2020, Shermin Voshmgir:Creative Commons CC-BY-NC-SA This license allows reusers to distribute, remix, adapt, and build upon the material in any medium or format for noncommercial purposes only, and only so long as attribution is given to the creator. If you remix, adapt, or build upon the material, you must license the modified material under identical terms.
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