The advent of new digital currencies has challenged our notions about money, its function and purpose, and our faith in the financial and banking structures that underpin its legitimacy. Oonagh Mc Donald charts the spectacular rise of cryptocurrencies over the past decade and considers the opportunities and threats that cryptocurrencies pose to existing fiat currencies. This revised edition includes a new chapter dealing with the high-profile bankruptcies of the recent “crypto winter”.
The book considers how regulatory bodies have been slow to respond to a technology that is evading existing regulatory frameworks. Urgent and more robust protection is needed from fraudulent initial coin offerings, scams and hacks. Throughout her analysis, Mc Donald shows that trust is fundamental to the operation of finance and that this will ultimately protect commercial bank money from the threat of new digital currencies. The book offers readers an insightful appraisal of the future of money and the challenges facing regulatory bodies.
Table of Content
1. Introduction: Bitcoin beginnings
2. New cryptocurrencies and new developments
3. Stablecoins: the search for stability
4. Initial coin offerings: the “Wild West”
5. The regulatory response to ICOs
6. Global stablecoins: Libra
7. Reactions to stablecoins
8. Central banks and central bank digital currencies
9. The decline of cash
10. Credit and trust
11. Epilogue: the crypto winter
Appendix: smart contracts
About the author
Oonagh Mc Donald CBE is an international expert in financial regulation. She has been a board member of the Financial Services Authority, the Investors Compensation Scheme, the General Insurance Standards Council and the Board for Actuarial Standards. She has also been a director of Scottish Provident, Skandia Insurance Company and the British Portfolio Trust. She was formerly a British Member of Parliament and was awarded a CBE in 1998 for services to financial regulation and business.
Her books include Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac: Turning the American Dream into a Nightmare (2013), Lehman Brothers: A Crisis of Value (2015) and Holding Bankers to Account (2019). She now lives in Washington DC, having been granted permanent residence on the grounds of “exceptional ability”.
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