The world economy has undergone a long and complex process of emergence from barter to fiat currencies and DeFi. Although the financial world is evolving, modern currencies and their analogs still have significant drawbacks. Let’s discuss what the currency of the future will be, whether it will replace existing fiat money and what transforming the modern monetary system will take.
Existing financial system shortcomings
To understand what the future currencies should be like, we need to deal with the disadvantages of fiat money, which we now use as the primary means of exchange. They have many drawbacks: from centralized management to inflation. We would like to go through the disadvantages of fiat currencies in use today.
Centralization
The management and control of money emission and circulation are concentrated in the hands of central banks. CBs determine how much currency to issue and set the rates. When central banks issue new units into circulation, the value of each separate unit decreases. On the one hand, this is how the issuing banks can control the level of inflation in the country and provide an additional flow of currency if the state does not have enough money. However, consumer purchasing power is reduced, and the money in every person’s pocket is devalued.
In addition, this approach can lead to economic collapse and various negative effects: default, devaluation, and even hyperinflation. Some countries may depend on others to varying degrees and borrow money from each other.
Inflation
As mentioned earlier, money is devalued due to inflation. Inflation occurs when the supply of currencies far outstrips the demand. To reduce the risks, it is necessary to ensure a finite supply, as it is implemented in some cryptocurrencies: Bitcoin emission is limited to 21 million coins. Once the miners get the last bitcoin, it will be impossible to get new coins, and supply will be limited.
This means that as the demand for cryptocurrency grows, its rate will only climb. This is the principal value of cryptocurrencies. For example, Bitcoin blockchain holds a protection mechanism against deflation – halvings. Approximately every four years, the block reward is reduced by half. Accordingly, it becomes more and more difficult to mine new coins, and the emission slows down naturally. But the main disadvantage of this approach is the outdated Proof-of-Work (PoW) mining algorithm, which requires huge energy investments.
If we are talking about developed countries, their currencies remain relatively stable. However, not everything is so smooth in the developing countries: often they are hyperinflationary, which then practically devalues their currencies. Remember the stories of Greece and Zimbabwe, where inflation exceeded 10% per day. But Hungary holds the absolute hyperinflation record – from 1945 to 1946, the national currency’s value was halving every 15 hours, and total daily inflation reached an unimaginable 207%. This destroyed the state economy. Of course, the situation was exacerbated by the post-war period, yet such events are the best way to identify the shortcomings of the financial system.
Binding to currencies of a particular country