Saturday, April 14, 2012

Re-inventing the Euro with digital currency

It is an interesting exercise to consider how important the role of printed notes is in the creation of a new currency. A decade ago, it was unthinkable that a country could have a viable currency without printing a lot of bank-notes. The process of designing bank-notes, the inherent meanings in the symbols, the security considerations incorporated in the physical bank notes; all of these were important considerations in creating a new country currency.

It has been shown with the invention of schemes like DigiCash, Bitcoin and others that it is conceivable to have a currency backed by some sort of structure or organisation without having any physical representation. With advances in mobile payments and new forms of acquiring, is it possible that a country some-where may have a currency with no printed notes available? (For cash transactions, notes and coins from another country could be used as an interim arrangement at a premium - but the fundamentals of the new currency could all be managed digitally).

That is why I found a recent article (Read here), quite interesting on the possibility of some countries potentially leaving the Euro. Maybe Greece can be the first country offering a cash-less (digital-only) currency. Naw! there will be huge protests in the streets...

No comments: