Vice Governor of the Central Bank Lu Lei: In the field of monetary economics prediction and practice, Satoshi Nakamoto deserves great respect
ChainCatcher news reports that, according to the Digital Fiat Currency Research Society, Lu Lei, the Deputy Governor of the People's Bank of China, stated in the preface he wrote for "Monetary Theory" that if central banks can issue currency without limits, then currency is likely to be replaced by other general equivalents—such as digital assets and stablecoins, which are currently experiencing a volatile upward trend in market value. Will this really happen? As someone who has been engaged in research at the central bank for a long time, my instinctive thought is that the urgent issue facing major developed economies is "saving the central bank from the hands of central bankers." Although this idea is by no means the current central bank digital currency (CBDC), as I believe CBDC does not change the institutional implications of monetary increment, is there a digital currency that can overcome the impact of various digital assets, achieve the effects of stablecoins, and maintain the existence of sovereign currency (solving the issue of monetary unity but fiscal decentralization in the euro)?The increasing expense of specific assets (such as digital assets) leads them to their opposite, lacking the liquidity necessary to serve as a general equivalent (i.e., being collected rather than circulated, which is the fate of precious metals exiting currency).In the field of monetary economics prediction and practice, there are two highly respected figures— the recently deceased Robert Mundell and the still unknown Satoshi Nakamoto. The former maintained throughout his life that exchange is a redundant transaction cost concept, experienced the practice of the single currency area theory in the Eurozone, but has not and finds it difficult to realize the utopia of dollarization. The latter has watched helplessly as the Bitcoin he created has evolved into an extremely expensive digital asset; currently, the energy consumed globally each year to mine the last 2 million coins is enough for over a hundred million people to use for more than a year. According to the marginal cost pricing method, the closer Bitcoin gets to being an asset, the further it is from being widely circulated as currency.Currently, digital assets are following the old path of the gold standard, and the concept of stablecoins is merely a "soft version" of the optimal currency area theory's practical proposal; our ideas are not necessarily more brilliant than the White Plan of 1945. It is merely that in the digital age, old wine is being relabeled.
