By considering potential benefits as well as possible risks of private and central bank digital currencies, the contributors to this volume improve our understanding of digital alternatives.

The Fed’s huge balance sheet allows it to engage in credit policy (the composition of the balance sheet is by definition credit policy), which inherently auto-resides in fiscal policy — but should auto-reside with Congress.

Today’s world is characterized by a dual monetary system, involving privately issued money — by banks of all types, telecom companies, or specialized payment providers — built upon a foundation of publicly issued money — by central banks.

Technology is incredibly important and influences what we can do with policy and what kinds of functionality we can even enable.

The fact that the historical development of payment systems has been driven by private initiative, not state action, is often overlooked.

The potentially transformative potential of cryptocurrencies was highlighted by Facebook’s 2019 announcement that it plans to issue a cryptocurrency called Libra, which would be backed by reserves of fiat currencies.

It is unrealistic and unreasonable to expect that Venezuela, or any other state actor, will ever relinquish its hold over economic policymaking or its monopoly on money.

[E]ven in liberal democracies where citizens can — in theory — protect themselves, corruption thrives and financial privacy is on the verge of extinction.

Digital currency and fintech have been some of the most powerful forces for freedom and personal liberty in China for the past decade, but their future influence is uncertain.

End‐​to‐​end digital ways of transacting have suddenly replaced long‐​entrenched analog ways of doing things.

Monetary economics must catch up with the new cryptocurrency landscape and help to shape it.

How could individual Fed accounts be destabilizing? Consider the case of a “classic” systemic financial crisis.

All the money we use today consists of bank liabilities, either private or central.

Traditionally, the economic weight of a currency’s issuing country — along with its trade links, financial connections, and geopolitical stature, as well as the currency’s perceived safety and liquidity — explain why some currencies are used disproportionately in cross-border transactions.

[A]fter 50 years of the BSA, let’s try to measure its effectiveness.

With respect to technological changes, new methods for providing loans and payment services by “shadow banks,” especially by fintech banks over the past several years, are accelerating the long‐​term trend of financial disintermediation from chartered banking by providing more attractive alternatives to customers.

America’s financial inclusion problem is usually expressed as the percentage of households — 5.4 percent at last count, according to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC 2020: 1) — who lack a bank account.

Despite the serious costs of the pandemic, the responses to it have reduced costly government regulations and speeded up the development of vaccines via the private sector and encouraged new technologies.