10/13 "What’s a Central Bank Digital Currency and Why Do They Matter (Even If They Never Exist)?" a CIESAS-IMTFI talk with Bill Maurer

Join us! Tomorrow 10/13, 9amPT/11CT/12pmET

"What’s a Central Bank Digital Currency and Why Do They Matter (Even If They Never Exist)?"

A virtual talk with Bill Maurer, UCI moderated by Magdalena Villareal, CIESAS

Wednesday, October 13, 9-10amPT/11am-12pmCT/12-1pmET

Register for Zoom webinar here: bit.ly/CIESAS_CBDC_maurer

Co-sponsored by

The Center for Advanced Research and Postgraduate Studies in Social Anthropology 

(CIESAS Occidente) & IMTFI

CBDCs became a topic of debate after the rise of bitcoin, yet proceed from very different assumptions about the nature of money and the role of the state. They also spotlight the public interest in the ability to pay for things—something so basic we rarely even consider it. This talk considers CBDCs—which, as of now, don’t even really exist, outside of a few pilots—in light of that public interest, and asks whether a truly democratic digital money can take shape in the context of pervasive digital surveillance and broader challenges to democracy.

For Q&A and Discussion Professor Maurer and Professor Villareal will be joined by:
Nima Yolmo, Ph.D. candidate in Anthropology, UC Irvine
Andrew Crawford, Doctoral Researcher at Universität Hamburg

Live Spanish translation will be available.


Bill Maurer is Dean of Social Sciences and Professor of Anthropology and Law, UCI and the director of the Institute for Money, Technology and Financial Inclusion. He is the author of How Would You Like to Pay? How Technology is Changing the Future of Money, among many other publications

Magdalena Villarreal is senior researcher and professor at the Mexican Center for Advanced Research and Postgraduate Studies in Social Anthropology (CIESAS Occidente) and member of the National Research System and the National Academy of Sciences.

Virtual Currencies and the State - B. Maurer, Money at the Zero Lower Bound

Bill Maurer in Just Money's Roundtable 2: Virtual Currencies and the State

I picked up a copy of the Financial Times in the Munich airport on my way home from keynoting the Bundesbank’s biannual International Cash Conference. The lead article, headlined “Draghi calls for urgent spending as he relaunches stimulus,” reported that the European Central Bank had lowered interest rates deeper into negative territory, to -0.5%. In the opinion pages, anthropologist and regular columnist Gillian Tett observed that negative interest rates were constraining policy options to stimulate growth, which might compel central banks to coordinate more directly with fiscal policy makers—thereby lessening, if not abandoning, central bank independence. Lack of monetary policy options was  leading to a “changing zeitgeist,” she wrote.

At the Bundesbank conference, attended by people affiliated with the cash payments divisions of central banks and others, researchers presented data on the increase in cash demand despite the decline of cash transactions at the point of sale. People are increasingly paying with their mobile phone or cards, but at the same time, negative interest spotlights the cost of bank deposits, suddenly making cash a smarter option for savings. At the conference, lighthearted disagreements over whether to call this “cash hoarding” gave way to more insistent pleas for what some called “non-transactional” cash to be recognized as a rational response to negative interest with consequences for commercial banking and banknote design. If people are going to hoard cash, then perhaps banks need to get into the business of building vaults. And if people are going to want cash as a store of value resistant to negative interest, perhaps innovative banknote design should support hoarding: the cash should be more durable, stackable, maybe smaller than a standard banknote, and able to be kept in a cupboard and easily stashed in a backpack, should one need to escape a natural disaster, political instability, or war.

These were European designers, talking about European banknotes. This is a changing zeitgeist indeed.

Cash limits just how low interest rates can go, unless governments find a way to levy and enforce a tax on cash. Cash holdings are an alternative to paying the bank to hold your deposits—at least until the cost of storage, security and insurance approach the cost of paying negative interest. Hence: vaults. If for everyday transactions cash serves as a control mechanism for consumption (the pain of seeing your cash go away introduces a mental speed-bump in your spending), at the monetary policy level cash is a control mechanism defining a limit to the “innovative” monetary policies we have seen since the global financial crisis.

To read the full discussion, please visit https://justmoney.org/b-maurer-money-at-the-zero-lower-bound/.