Money has already evolved from coins, to notes, entries in balance sheets and bits on computers. The institutions that provide, operate, guarantee and regulate money have evolved with it. So how should it evolve in the digital era? The invention of cryptocurrencies has forced everybody involved and above all the central banks — the agents of the state in managing the public good of money — to confront this question. If crypto is not the answer, what is?

The Bank for International Settlements — the club of central banks — has been prominent in the effort to address this question. The latest result is part of its Annual Report, which analyses the emerging ecosystem of cryptocurrencies, stablecoins and exchanges.

This brave new system is — it concludes — inherently flawed. The crypto crash (and preceding bubble) shows that cryptocurrencies are objects of speculation rather than stores of value. That also makes them unusable as units of account. As the BIS notes: “The prevalence of stablecoins, which attempt to peg their value to the US dollar or other conventional currencies, indicates the pervasive need in the crypto sector to piggyback on the credibility provided by the unit of account issued by the central bank. In this sense, stablecoins are the manifestation of crypto’s search for a nominal anchor.”