ABSTRACT
This chapter begins with a recap of the historic development of monetary systems and their key features, to give an account of crypto money and its role in currency competition. W. Eucken identifies three types of the monetary system: the commodity money system, the debt money system, and the credit money system. In view of the pivotal roles of banks, the central bank and the state, the chapter describes the existing credit money system as a public–private partnership for money production. Mainstream economics today is dominated by the New Keynesian Model, which has neither a banking sector nor a capital market. Money enters the model “exogenously”, and investment is assumed always to be identical to savings. The old concept of blockchain technology as a cryptographically sealed database with special properties, which was revived by the failings of the credit money system in the financial crisis, made it possible to create virtual commodity money.
