加密货币、代币化和支付的未来

August 2025 Crypto, tokenisation, and the future ofpayments Stephen G. Cecchetti and Kermit L. Schoenholtz1 Brandeis University, European Systemic Risk Board and CEPR; NYU Stern School ofBusiness “November 4, 2024, was America’s Hard Fork on digital assets. Since takingoffice, President Trump has righted the wrongs of his predecessor by fashioningthe United States into a crypto superpower.”U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, 30 July 2025. “I’ve always been deeply opposed to crypto, bitcoin, etc. The only true use casefor it is criminals, drug traffickers … money laundering, tax avoidance. If Iwas the government, I’d close it down.” JPMorganChase CEO Jamie Dimon, 6 December 2023 (cited in Cox 2023). 1 INTRODUCTION “Satoshi Nakamoto” launched Bitcoin on 3 January 2009. Based on innovativeapplication of cryptography and new distributed ledger technology, the idea was todevelop a new form of money that would replace government fiat currency as a meansof payment. Nakamoto’s innovation spawned an entire industry. By some estimates, there are over20,000 cryptoassets – instruments whose ownership is recorded on a ledger based onsome form of cryptography (FCA 2023). At this writing, these have a cumulative valueof about $4 trillion, with Bitcoin accounting for roughly 60% of the total.2 While it functions as a store of value, outside of the crypto world Bitcoin is stillneither a common means of exchange nor a popular unit of account.3And the entirecrypto system is but a dim mirror of the traditional monetary system, with far lessinvestor and consumer protection, little transparency, and limited compliance withrules to reduce criminal use. According to one critic, “crypto is basically a giant grift”(Krugman 2025). Importantly, the traditional financial system already has been ‘digital’ for decades.Most wholesale and retail transactions occur electronically within seconds, sometimeseven across borders. For people in much of the advanced world, it is straightforward togo for weeks, if not months, without touching paper money. To remain competitive, traditional financial intermediaries are not standing still.Since the time of Bitcoin’s introduction, virtually every type of traditional financialservice has become cheaper, faster, and more accessible, both within and acrossborders. Banks and credit unions are responding quickly to new competition inpayments: for example, the introduction of PayPal and Venmo led to the creation ofZelle, a bank-owned retail network. Savers have greater access to market returns.Borrowing is simpler and cheaper. People trade conventional financial instruments –equity, bonds, and derivatives – on their mobile phones. And much of this traditionalsystem is automated. Nevertheless, US authorities are actively seeking to make the United States “theundisputed Bitcoin superpower and the crypto capital of the world” (Huang 2025).Consider the following US Government actions in 2025: •The President ordered the creation of a Strategic Bitcoin Reserve and a USDigital Asset Stockpile.4•Regulators eased rules on bank engagement in crypto-related activities(FDIC 2025; SEC 2025), including the provision of legal certainty for cryptocustody.•Congress enacted and the President signed the GENIUS Act to promote aspecific type of crypto – reserve-backed “stablecoins” whose value is peggedto the US dollar – as a means of payment (US Congress 2025).•The President’s Working Group on Digital Assets, created by executive orderin January, issued a broad report that addresses crypto market structure,technology, bank engagement, payment systems, countering illicit finance,and taxation (White House 2025a).•The President directed the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC)to change regulations on retirement accounts to allow investment in “[a]lternative assets, such as private equity, real estate, and digital assets”.5 As it has been for hundreds of years, technology remains a driving factor in thetransformation of finance. Long before the 20th century, practitioners developed orrefined concepts such as double-entry bookkeeping, joint stock companies and limitedliability. More recently, we have securitisation, options-pricing theory and the creationof numerous contingent claims such as credit default swaps. On the operational side,advances in communication and computation led to vast increases in the scale andspeed of transactions. And financial firms are now experimenting with artificialintelligence (AI) in a wide range of activities – from robo-advising to fraud detection. The US Government anticipates that cryptoassets and the technologies on whichthey are based will bring a further revolution in finance. By removing obstacles to theintegration of crypto into the traditional financial system, it hopes not only to makefinance more efficient but also to further strengthen the US dollar as the dominantglobal currency (White House 2025b).6In recent testimony before the US House ofRepresentatives, Treasur