Digital currencies, including potential central bank digital currencies (CBDC), have generated a lot of interest over the past decade, since the emergence of Bitcoin. The interest has only grown in recent months because of a desire for contactless payment methods, stemming from the coronavirus pandemic. In this post, we discuss a common distinction made between “token-based” and “account-based” digital currencies. We show that this distinction is problematic because Bitcoin and many other digital currencies satisfy both definitions.
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The Future of Payment Infrastructure Could Be Permissionless, with M. Lee, Liberty Street Economics.
Banking on Blockchain, Frontiers of Digital Finance, Chapter 9.
The Crypto Multiplier? with M. van Oordt, Journal of Corporate Finance, forthcoming; formerly posted as BIS Working Papers No 1104
How Banks Create Gridlock in Payment Systems to Save Liquidity: The Case of Canada with Z. Lu and P. Tian, Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, forthcoming; formerly posted as Bank of Canada Staff Working Paper 2023-26
Why DeFi Lending: Evidence from Aave V2 with G. Cornelli, L. Gambacorta and A. Reghezza, Journal of Financial Intermediation, forthcoming; formerly posted as BIS Working Paper No 1183
Decoding DeFi lending: Motivations, risks, and investor behaviors with G. Cornelli, L. Gambacorta and A. Reghezza (VoxEU 15 NOV 2024, Financial Markets)
Crypto Exchange Tokens with M. van Orrdt (BIS Working Papers No 1201)
Truth by Consensus: A Theoretical and Empirical Investigation with G. Camera and C. Money, mimeo.
Next Generation Correspondent Banking, with P. Koo Wilkens and H. S. Shin (BIS Bulletin No 87)
The Case for Tokenized Bank Deposits with H. S. Shin (Project Syndicate)
Stablecoins Versus Tokenized Deposits: Implications for the Singleness of Money, with H. S. Shin (BIS Bulletin # 73)
The Tokenization Continuum, with I. Aldasoro, S. Doerr, L. Gambacorta and P. Koo Wilkens (BIS Bulletin # 72)
Why Fixed Costs Matter for Proof-of-Work Based Cryptocurrencies with M. van Oordt, forthcoming in Management Science (Best Cryptoeconomics Paper, The Third Toronto Fintech Conference 2020)
Optimal Bidder Selection in Clearing House Default Auctions, with D. Murphy, T. Nesmith and X. Wu (Federal Reserve Board Finance and Economic Discussion Series, 2023-033)
Intraday Liquidity Around the World, BIS Working Papers No 1089, 2023 (I am one of several authors.)
The Case for Convenience: How CBDC Design Choices Impact Monetary Policy Pass-Through, with J. Yu and H. Zhu (BIS Working Papers No 1046, 2023)
How Banks Create Gridlock to Save Liquidity in Canada’s Large Value Payment System, with Z. Lu and P. Tian (Bank of Canada Staff Working Paper, 2023-26)
Trust Bridges and Money Flows: A Digital Marketplace to Improve Cross-Border Payments, with T. Adrian, D. He and M. Griffoli, BIS Working Papers No 1112/IMF Fintech Notes No 2023/001)
An Impossibility Theorem on Truthful Reporting in Fully Decentralized Systems, with C. Monnet, 2022.
Regulatory Requirements of Banks and Arbitrage in the Post-Crisis Federal Funds Market, with S. Priazhkina (Bank of Canada Staff Working Paper 2022-48)
Defining and Measuring Payment Interoperability, WEF white paper (I am one of several authors.)
An Application of Shapley Value Cost Allocation to Liquidity Savings Mechanisms (Journal of Money, Credit and Banking)
Dinero Electrónico: The Rise and Fall of Ecuador’s Central Bank Digital Currency with A. Arauz and D. F. Ramos F (Latin American Journal of Central Banking, Best Policy Paper 2021)
Privacy as a Public Good: A Case for Electronic Cash with M. van Oordt (Journal of Political Economy)
Monetizing Privacy, with M. Lee (FRBNY Staff Reports)
Estimating Policy Functions in Payments Systems using Deep Reinforcement Learning, with P. S. Castro, A Desai, H. Du and F. Rivadeneyra (Best Paper Award, NeurIPS 2020)
Investigating the Impact of Global Stablecoins (I am one of many contributors to this report.)
The Economics of Distributed Ledger Technologies for Securities Settlement with E. Benos and P. Gurrola-Perez (Ledger Journal)
Who Sees the Trades? The Effect of Information on Liquidity in Inter-Dealer Markets with M. Lee, A. Martin and R. Townsend
Entrepreneurial Incentives and the Role of Initial Coin Offerings with M. van Oordt (Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control)
Nonlinear Pricing and the Market for Settling Payments with A. Copeland (Journal of Money, Credit and Banking)
Bitcoin 1, Bitcoin 2, … : An Experiment in Privately Issued Outside Monies with N. Wallace (Economic Inquiry)
A Proposal for a Decentralized Liquidity Savings Mechanism with Side Payments with A. Furgal, D. Hudson and Z. Guo (R3 Report)
Centralized Netting in Financial Networks with P. Zimmerman (Journal of Banking & Finance)
Project Jasper: A Canadian Experiment with Distributed Ledger Technology for Domestic Interbank Payments Settlement (I am one of many contributors to this white paper that elaborates on the BoC FSR article.)
Central Bank Cryptocurrencies with M. Bech (BIS Quarterly Review)
Project Jasper: Are Distributed Wholesale Payment Systems Feasible Yet? with J. Chapman, S. Hendry, A. McCormack and W. McMahon (Bank of Canada Financial System Review)
CAD-coin versus Fedcoin (R3 Report)