货币的未来回到未来——货币互联网

INDEX03EXECUTIVE SUMMARY04BACK TO THE FUTURE06BUILDING THE INTERNETOF MONEY08UNLEASHING A DIGITALPAYMENT DIVIDEND INTHE MIDDLE EAST 091112 RE-TOOLING THEREGULATOREXTENDING THE REACHOF GOVERNMENTYOUR GOVERNMENT.POWERED BY BLOCKCHAIN EXECUTIVE SUMMARYThegrowth of the digital economy has alreadydisrupted industries as diverse as media, music andtransportation.The penetration of thousands offintech start-ups into all spheres of financial serviceshas now brought this revolution to the disruption ofmoney itself.It’s a development that will increasingly blur thedistinction between money and data. To some degreethis has already happened. The growth of e-commerceand apps for ordering taxis or paying for restaurantsmeans that the physical act of paying is alreadyforgotten. As the internet of things enables a newround of machine-to-machine transaction growth inthe years ahead, payment virtualisation will intensifywith the potential for a proliferation of new stores ofvalue to escape the cost, complexity and regulatoryrigidity of traditional money.Regulators, governments and businesses alike havemuch to gain as the internet of money gets underway.Leveraging low cost, open source technologies –such as cryptocurrencies, the blockchain or otherdistributed ledgers – opens the door to reachingpoorer or excluded customers and serving needs thatare not met by existing financial services infrastructure.It could expand digital commerce above and beyondnational lines, while allowing new forms of taxation tocater for an expanding mobile workforce.The opportunities are limitless, but the obstaclesto creating, managing and regulating a proliferatingarray of digital forms of money are substantial. Thesechallenges raise questions that will be difficult toanswer until the new reality of the internet of moneydawns – questions that will reshape the role of theregulator and, potentially, how governments definethemselves before their citizens.Building the right regulatory template offers the bestchance to harness this generation’s greatest driver ofgrowth and productivity. In order to create trust indigital money as a safe store of value, while encouragingdisruptive innovation will require governments andregulators to work more closely with a wider rangeof stakeholders – including technology start-ups –than would previously have been thinkable. In thosecountries that have taken the biggest steps so far,including Sweden, Estonia, the UK and UAE, it’s alsoabout a pragmatic response to local dynamics, and anambition to be at the forefront of the digital economyfrom the top of government.Ascentral banks and governments around theworld continue to experiment with the new money,businesses of all sizes will continue to innovate to plugdigital gaps in service exposed by the analogue rigidityof existing financial architecture. The question is, how,and by whom, should they be regulated? BACK TO THE FUTURESince Richard Nixon’s decision to remove the dollar’speg to the gold standard in 1971, the supply ofmoney in the global economy has exploded. Nearlyfive decades later, as the financial services industryis transformed by a wave of digital disruption, theimplications of that decision are still being interpreted.As the financialisation of the economy took holdduring the market liberalisation of the 1970s and1980s,growth in financial transactions and theavailability of credit helped drive massive growthinelectronic payments.That detached moneyfrom cash and, in turn, made the concept of moneyincreasingly abstract. Money moved from being thephysical representation of a valuable commodity toan intangible symbol of trust.Nearly a decade on from the financial crisis, thecollapse in trust and the credit crunch that followedhas helped to enable a parallel universe of alternativefinancial service providers to flourish. There are nowan estimated 12,000 fintech companies, proliferatinginto all areas of the financial services industry frompayments to lending, wealth management and capitalmarkets. Once perceived as a threat to the traditionalbanking industry, incumbents are increasingly graspingopportunities to partner or forge alliances with newerfintech entrants.It is against this backdrop that this paper exploresthe implications for the next phase of the fintechrevolution – the future of money itself. At a timewhen the consumer relationship with cash is morevirtualised and abstract, and where use of physical cashcontinues to decline in many markets, the next phaseoffers as-yet undiscovered potential for unleashing anew period of expansive growth in transactions, aboveand beyond the limits of national borders.The possible applications of the blockchain technologythatunderpins new currencies such as Bitcoinare endless, but Bitcoin transactions and workingblockchain business models have been confined to alimited number of uses so far. At the same time fintechtransaction volumes remain small, relative to the sizeof the total financial services market. Their imp