Cryptocurrencies could fix our broken monetary system

In turbulent and fast-changing times, it helps to know that some of life’s uncertainties are anchored to something solid and dependable.

So it will come as no solace whatsoever to remind you that the global currency system is anything but solid or dependable. That is one reason the world’s finances are in such a mess - but new digital cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin could bring us back down to earth.

Let me explain. Once upon a time, the currencies we used to buy and sell things had real tangible value; coins were literally made from silver and gold. When governments introduced paper money and coins made from non-precious metals, they needed a proxy for their former value. So the so-called “gold standard” effectively made coins and notes into an IOU against gold, and everything remained stable.

But when President Nixon ripped up the gold standard in 1971, currency floated free - the dollar became a so-called “fiat” currency, untethered to anything except its central bank’s ability to print more money.

Lost in translation: Smart contracts for financial services

The concept of smart contracts is simple; clauses and rules are embedded in software which is distributed via networks to provide an interface which formalises a transaction. Bitcoin has a distributed ledger a distributed consensus mechanism, and a distributed set of business rules and conditions. The contract for Bitcoin is relatively simple: ‘are the parties who they purport to be’, ‘do they have permission to buy/sell’ and ‘does the buyer have funds’. This is a straightforward smart contract which is actioned and then fulfilled for every buy or sell on the Bitcoin network.

The idea of a smart contract is very powerful; putting your trust in a set of rules and a shared consensus mechanism rather than any one party seems, on the face of it, an ideal solution. In finance we already trust in rules and triggers such as ‘stop loss orders’ and ‘buy triggers’ for share trading. This kind of trigger is relatively simple but still this transaction has its fair share of intermediaries and parties. For a wealth product, where I may be buying units in a fund which will trigger purchases in multiple markets and assets there are many more intermediaries and contracts. This increasing level of complex relationships and parties means that the contracts and rules must also be more complex and brings me to my concern in developing even medium complexity smart contracts with high levels of automation.