Stablecoins and the Architecture of Moneyness: Rethinking What Makes Something Money
By
Christopher K. Odinet
Summary
This article explores the fundamental nature of money, arguing that traditional functional definitions (medium of exchange, unit of account, store of value) fail to explain what money actually is or how it emerges. It examines the concept of "moneyness" — the spectrum of liquidity and acceptability that makes something function as money — and applies this framework to stablecoins, analyzing how they fit into the architecture of monetary systems. The piece delves into the institutional, social, and technological factors that confer moneyness on different assets.
Source
Key quotes
· 3 pulledThese functional definitions tell us what money does. They do not tell us what money is, and they certainly do not explain how something becomes money in the first place.
Money is a fact of life. We earn it, spend it, save it, and worry about it. Yet for all its omnipresence, money remains strangely elusive when we try to pin down exactly what it is.
The concept of 'moneyness' — the spectrum of liquidity and acceptability that makes something function as money — provides a more nuanced framework for understanding monetary evolution.
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