Cryptocurrencies: Money, Trust and Regulation

About the Author\nOonagh McDonald CBE is an international expert in financial regulation, having advised regulatory authorities in a wide range of countries, including Indonesia, Sri Lanka and Ukraine. She was formerly a British Member of Parliament, then a board member of the Financial Services Authority, the Investors Compensation Scheme, the General Insurance Standards Council, the Board for Actuarial Standards and the Gibraltar Financial Services Commission. She was also a director of Scottish Provident and the international board of Skandia Insurance Company and the British Portfolio Trust. She is currently Senior Adviser to Crito Capital LLC. She was awarded a CBE in 1998 for services to financial regulation and business. Her books include Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac: Turning the American Dream into a Nightmare (2013), Lehman Brothers: A Crisis of Value (2015) and Holding Bankers to Account (2019). She now lives in Washington DC, having been granted permanent residence on the grounds of "exceptional ability".\nThe advent of new digital currencies has challenged our notions about money, its function and purpose, and our faith in the financial and banking structures that underpin its legitimacy. Oonagh McDonald examines the challenges, opportunities and threats that cryptocurrencies pose to existing fiat currencies and their potential to change how global finance operates.\nFrom Bitcoin to Facebook’s Diem, the book charts the spectacular rise of cryptocurrencies over the past decade alongside the much slower regulatory response. It assesses the potential of the technology underpinning new digital currencies – blockchain, digital tokens and smart contracts – to evade existing regulatory frameworks and considers the need for more robust protection from fraudulent initial coin offerings, scams and hacks.\nThe book examines the motivations of central banks as they begin to explore opportunities for an alternative global digital currency, and what this might mean for the supremacy of the dollar and other fiat currencies. The future of cash is also considered. Throughout her analysis, McDonald shows that trust is fundamental to the operation of finance and that this will ultimately protect commercial bank money from the threat of new digital currencies.\nThe book offers readers an insightful appraisal of the future of money and the challenges facing regulatory bodies.