Wow! eBook
Cryptocurrencies: Money, Trust and Regulation Revised paperback edition
Author(s): Dr Oonagh McDonald (Author)
- Publisher: Agenda Publishing
- Publication Date: 28 Mar. 2023
- Edition: Revised paperback edition
- Language: English
- Print length: 276 pages
- ISBN-10: 1788216393
- ISBN-13: 9781788216395
Book Description
The 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 charts the spectacular rise of cryptocurrencies over the past decade and considers the opportunities and threats that cryptocurrencies pose to existing fiat currencies. This revised edition includes a new chapter dealing with the high-profile bankruptcies of the recent “crypto winter”.
The book considers how regulatory bodies have been slow to respond to a technology that is evading existing regulatory frameworks. Urgent and more robust protection is needed from fraudulent initial coin offerings, scams and hacks. 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. The book offers readers an insightful appraisal of the future of money and the challenges facing regulatory bodies.
Editorial Reviews
Review
Dr McDonald’s rigorously researched analysis of the development of cryptocurrencies is a must-read for anyone who has a stake in the future of money. It is an historical tour de force that painstakingly teases out of every corner of the cryptocurrency world the critical issues that governments, policy-makers, and consumers must consider before abandoning government fiat money. –Thomas P. Vartanian, Executive Director and Professor of Law, Program on Financial Regulation and Technology, George Mason University
Everyone fascinated by how the cryptocurrency phenomenon has created a whole sector of ventures to furnish ‘alternative currencies’, while the dollar price of a Bitcoin boomed from 8 cents to a high of more than $60,000, must wonder whether all this will really bring about a revolution in the nature of money. Will Bitcoin’s libertarian dream to displace central bank fiat currency be achieved? Or ironically, will central banks take over digital currencies and make themselves even more dominant monetary monopolies than before? Oonagh McDonald, always a voice of financial reason, provides a thorough consideration of these questions and of cryptocurrency ideas and reality in general, with the intertwined issues of technology, regulation, trust, and government monetary power. This is a very insightful and instructive guide for the intrigued. –Alex J. Pollock, Distinguished Senior Fellow Emeritus, R Street Institute, and former Principal Deputy Director, Office of Financial Research, US Treasury
About the Author
Oonagh McDonald CBE is an international expert in financial regulation. She has been a board member of the Financial Services Authority, the Investors Compensation Scheme, the General Insurance Standards Council and the Board for Actuarial Standards. She has also been a director of Scottish Provident, Skandia Insurance Company and the British Portfolio Trust. She was formerly a British Member of Parliament and 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”.
