数字货币:货币本质的延续与颠覆

Digital Currency: Continuity and Subversio of the Nature of Money

新技术革命与产业变革下,数字货币迅速发展起来,各国竞相开发和采用数字货币。研究数字货币的本质,是优化央行数字货币设计框架、普及数字货币应用和应对全球金融变革的必然要求。研究发现央行数字货币具有价值尺度、流通手段、支付手段、贮藏手段和世界货币职能;基于马克思和希克斯的信用观分析,提出数字货币是一种新型的、更强的信用工具的观点,因此数字货币是货币本质的延续。同时,基于熊彼特的创新理论和货币记忆论提出,数字货币在技术、特性、形态和功能上对货币的本质进行了变革,颠覆了货币作为一般等价物的本质。数字货币具有记忆的特征,在未来数字货币广泛采用的背景下,将更加能够显示出“货币就是一本大账簿”的特征。总之,数字货币是货币本质的延续与颠覆。

With new technological revolution and industrial transformation, digital currency has developed rapidly and been adopted in many countries. Studying the nature of digital currency is an prerequisite to optimize the design framework of digital currency of the central bank, popularize digital currency and respond to global financial transformation. The present paper finds that digital currency of the central bank serves as a measure of value, a means of circulation, payment and hoarding as well as a“world money”. By analyzing Marx’s and Hicks’ s monetary theories of credit, it concludes that digital currency, as a novel and more powerful credit tool, is the continuity of the nature of money. Meanwhile, based on Schumpeter’s innovation theory and Kocherlakota’s theory on“money as memory”, it finds that digital currency has changed the nature of money as the universal equivalent in terms of its technology, properties, form and functions. With the feature of memory, digital currency will display more apparently that“money is a huge account book”in the future when it is extensively adopted. In conclusion, digital currency is the continuity and subversion of the nature of money.