Inescapable Role of Real Currency Convertibility

The invention of paper money created a major new problem: how to ensure its value. Historically, the most reliable means of preserving and stabilizing the value of paper currency has been for those issuing paper money to guarantee to convert their notes, on demand, into real assets, at a specified rate of exchange. The most common asset used for this has been gold, which has been effective in preserving the value of currency over a century or more, but this has not prevented serious economic fluctuations. Consequently, for more than a century, economists have argued that it would be more effective to make currency convertible on demand into a range of commodities. Unfortunately, efforts to devise a means of achieving this have not succeeded to date.

Inevitable Failure of Inconvertible Paper Money

Since the invention of paper money, it has been understood that it is difficult for its creators to resist issuing so much that it loses value. Long experience led to the single uniquely effective means of resisting this fraud: this is for the issuer to guarantee to convert their paper money, on demand, into some defined asset, such as gold, on fixed terms. With the end of the US dollar's guaranteed convertibility into gold, its value became dependent on decisions by leaders of the US government and financial system, unhindered by the need to keep it stable. Predictably, this led to unprecedented inflation of the supply of dollars, leading to ever-rising prices and continuing decline in the acceptability of dollars and US geopolitical leadership.

How NFTs Influence Society: A Look at Scarcity Mindset, Generational Gaps in Education, and the Impact on the Environment

I propose that non fungible tokens (NFTs) will affect the greater public, and specifically the art market, at an exponential rate due to three factors. The first, scarcity mindset, drives the human sense of urgency for a particular commodity (Garvey, 2021). The next factor is the potential use of NFTs in real world applications or throughout the economy. The attraction of NFTs is that they are indiscriminate and allow anyone from various socioeconomic backgrounds to buy in. As scarcity seemingly increases, NFTs appear to be a good investment; but are there real world applications or do they merely exist within the virtual realm? The last determinant I would like to explore is the environmental impact of NFTs on the physical world. When comparing virtual ‘tokens’ used to fund digital art to paper money exchanged for a piece of physical artwork in concrete space, theoretically the former is much less detrimental to society. However, through practice-led research, I have conducted a six month investigation from May 2021 through October 2021 to uncover the true ramifications NFTs have on the world.

Cryptocurrency as Epidemiologically Safe Means of Transactions: Diminishing Risk of SARS-CoV-2 Spread

In comparison with other respiratory viruses, the current COVID-19 pandemic’s rapid seizing the world can be attributed to indirect (contact) way of transmission of SARS-CoV-2 virus in addition to the regular airborne way. A significant part of indirect transmission is made through cash bank notes. SARS-CoV-2 remains on cash paper money for period around four times larger than influenza A virus and is absorbed by cash notes two and a half times more effectively than influenza A (our model). During the pandemic, cryptocurrencies have gained attractiveness as an “epidemiologically safe” means of transactions. On the basis of the authors’ gallop polls performed online with social networks users in 44 countries in 2020–2021 (the total number of clear responses after the set repair 32,115), around 14.7% of surveyed participants engaged in cryptocurrency-based transactions during the pandemic. This may be one of the reasons of significant rise of cryptocurrencies rates since mid-March 2020 till the end of 2021. The paper discusses the reasons for cryptocurrency attractiveness during the COVID-19 pandemic. Among them, there are fear of SARS-CoV-2 spread via cash contacts and the ability of the general population to mine cryptocurrencies. The article also provides a breakdown of the polled audience profile to determine the nationalities that have maximal level of trust to saving and transacting money as cryptocurrencies.

Regulated free banking in Switzerland (1881–1907)

The free-banking history of Switzerland is subdivided into periods with unfettered competition (1826–1881), and strict banknote regulation (1881–1907). This paper suggests that the Federal Banknote Act of 1881 was introduced to remedy the fragmentation of the unfettered-competition period, during which private note-issuing banks were unable to issue standardised paper money. Although the corresponding minimum-reserve and mutual-acceptance rules led to a standardisation, they created new problems. For example, these regulatory interventions reduced the flexibility (or “elasticity”) of the paper-money supply. It turned out that a central note-issuing bank is needed to supply adequate amounts of standardised banknotes.