Kameir

In his fundamental book, Money and the Mechanism of Exchange, English economist William Stanley Jevons explains that currencies address a central economic problem: the coincidence of wants. The phrase describes the conundrum inherent to barter where the parties of the transaction have to agree to sell and buy each other’s goods.The obvious challenge is the improbability of the wants, needs and events that would enable such a transaction occurring at the same time and the same place. In absence of this double coincidence of wants, the parties need to agree on an acceptable substitute: a medium of exchange. While Jevons included the latter function in his definition of money, his thinking was necessary informed by and limited to the technologies of his time.The following is a review of the definition of money, the state of currencies and their potential trajectory with consideration of current technologies, including blockchain-based solutions and so-called “cryptocurrencies”.

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