In the MIT Technology Review “10 Breakthrough Technologies for 2020”, digital money is correctly identified as one of the most important technologies of the year. It really is, and not only for financial reasons. Their article says that
The rise of digital currency has massive ramifications for financial privacy.
Indeed it does but, as I suggest in the book, we can make design choices about how digital money works to “set the dial” on privacy. So I think that the privacy issues can be managed. But what really caught my eye in the MIT piece was the closing statement that the “digital money wars have begun”.
This may seem hyberolic, but it really isn’t, which is why I wrote this book.
As to who might win these wars, well, who knows. The truth is that after writing this book I don’t know any more than anyone else knows. I can say that I doubt that Libra is the future of digital money (many observers noted that Mark Zuckererg’s Vision for 2030 that was published on Facebook in January 2020, did not mention Libra at all) but it has certainly been a catalyst for thinking about the future of digital money. What I am more certain about is that there are some people who take the notion of this coming digital money war seriously, have a strategy for the battles to come and a long-term plan to win it.
