Published: Aug. 2, 2021, 10 a.m.
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George Selgin, director of the Center of Monetary Alternatives at the Cato Institute joins the show to discuss Bitcoin, Free Banking, and stablecoins. In this episode:\\xa0
- Why George refers to Bitcoin as a synthetic commodity money
- Why George was excited by the possibility for synthetic commodity money
- What conditions would have to hold for Bitcoin to be considered money
- Why money is a spectrum rather than binary
- Are stablecoins prone to bank runs?
- Is Tether\'s melange of underlying collateral sufficient?
- How should stablecoins be regulated?
- Why are regulators looking into stablecoins today?
- Comparing stablecoins to Money Market Mutual Funds
- Why money market funds broke the buck in 08
- Are stablecoins as systemic as money market funds?
- George\'s objections to Gorton and Zhang\'s paper on free banking and stablecoins
- George\'s definition of free banking
- Was the 1830s-60s period in the U.S. a period of genuine free banking?
- The actual causes of bank failures in the pre-Civil War period
- Why \'unit banking\' was so fragile
- What lessons can be taken from Canada\'s experience with free banking in that era
- Why the history of Free Banking is a red herring in the stablecoin debate
- George\'s recommendations for a primer on free banking
- George\'s reflections on Hal Finney\'s reference to his work
- Why bank failures are often the consequence of regulation
Content mentioned in this episode:\\xa0
Sponsor notes:\\xa0
- This episode is brought to you by\\xa0Withum, a top 25 accounting firm with a cutting-edge Digital Currency and Blockchain Technology practice. To learn more, visit\\xa0\\xa0withum.com/crypto.
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