The Identity, Fungibility and Anonymity of Money

Alastair Berg

Economic Papers, 2020, vol. 39, issue 2, 104-117

Abstract: The fungibility of money is a characteristic which contributes to the quality of money. Fungibleness is itself related to the technical ability to associate a unit of currency with its past instances of exchange. This history is analogous to the identity of money. The identity of an individual unit of exchange is increasingly important as cash becomes less common, and banks require more information about the provenance of money. Private currencies, including Bitcoin and Libra, are themselves subject to tracking. The prior financial – and potentially political – activities of a user determine the fungibility of the currency they hold. Different money technologies provide varied levels of privacy, while cryptocurrencies offer users the potential to choose the level of information they share.

Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1111/1759-3441.12273

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bla:econpa:v:39:y:2020:i:2:p:104-117

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.blackwell ... bs.asp?ref=0812-0439

Access Statistics for this article

Economic Papers is currently edited by Professor Guay Lim

More articles in Economic Papers from The Economic Society of Australia Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Wiley Content Delivery ().