Money is undergoing unprecedented change: around the world, we see new ways of paying each other, new stores of value, new ways of recording economic activity and new forms of exchange.

But how surprising is this period of upheaval? From the wheel to the loom, the steam engine to electricity and the computer, human history has witnessed regular, intense bouts of technological progress. Are there particular factors that lead to a spirit of innovation?

Anton Howes, our guest on the latest New Money Review podcast, is well-placed to answer that question.

Anton is historian-in-residence at the UK’s Royal Society for the encouragement of arts, manufactures and commerce, which is nearly 270 years old. Before that he was a lecturer in economic history at King's College London.

His specialist subject is the three-century period of English history when the country switched from being a ‘godforsaken backwater’ off the north-west coast of continental Europe to playing the leading global role in the industrial revolution.

Listen to the podcast to hear Anton’s views on the following topics.

Everyone outside the country is expecting the arrival of China’s new sovereign digital currency. President Xi has recently been singing the praises of blockchain technology, the infrastructure for the new money.

But how the story of China’s blockchain plays out is likely to depend on internal political struggles, says Scott Weatherill, our guest on the latest episode of the New Money Review podcast.

According to Weatherill, chief risk manager, Japan for cryptocurrency market maker B2C2, the version that’s about to be introduced for China’s 1.4 billion people should be seen as part of a new anti-corruption drive by Xi.

That’s because the new blockchain will enable the state to supervise every single financial transaction in the country.

“This is all coming from Xi’s push to enact very difficult reforms that are going to cost a lot of elites in China a lot of money,” Weatherill says.

Beijing knows what it has to do to rebalance the economy, says our interviewee—it needs to move the country away from too heavy a reliance on investment and get ballooning internal debts under control.

The central authorities might also reap a political dividend.

“The idea is transfer wealth from local governments and local elites back to blue collar workers and the poorest people,” Weatherill says.

But Xi is facing political obstacles.

“Why can’t they do it? Because there are vested interests throughout the various layers in the state-owned enterprises in China’s state capitalist system,” Weatherill says.

The discussion then moves on to cryptocurrencies’ role in helping capital move out of China, bitcoin’s liquidity and market prospects for 2020.

Neil Walsh, head of the Cybercrime, Anti-Money Laundering (AML) and Counter-Financing of Terrorism (CFT) Department at the United Nations, gives an exclusive interview to New Money Review.

Our discussion covers:

In this episode of the New Money Review podcast, Michael Howell, CEO of  CrossBorder Capital, a London-based advisory and fund management firm, explains why wholesale money markets are now addicted to the liquidity pumped into the system by central banks.

There is little prospect of central banks reversing course, says Howell, and we should look forward to further bouts of quantitative easing (QE) around the globe.

And, far from its previous promises to unwind the QE it embarked on after the 2008 crisis, the Fed has just overseen the biggest liquidity surge ever, CrossBorder Capital calculates.

In the podcast:

The global financial infrastructure—a complex network of technical systems provided by central banks, exchanges, clearing houses and securities depositaries—supports trillions of dollars of trading a year and underlies almost all economic activity.

But it could work faster, more cheaply and more safely, benefiting everyone. In India, a shift from paper-based to digital finance now promises a $700bn boost in economic output.

Who is going to write the electrical circuit map for the new system? Some powerful names are already making a land grab.

Mark Zuckerberg told us in 2019 he wants his own version of money to go with his social media networks. Cryptocurrencies, launched in the depths of the 2008/09 financial crisis, offer a more radical alternative.

Facebook’s Libra may not come to fruition. But the current financial system is looking, if not obsolete, then increasingly outdated.

There isn’t a single part of today’s infrastructure that will remain unaffected by technological change. And there are certainly going to be big winners and big losers by the time we reach 2030.

But many of the new infrastructure initiatives are being introduced from the ground up, making it difficult to keep track of what’s going on. It’s also hard to assess what’s serious and what’s not.

Ruth Wandhöfer, our guest on the latest New Money Review podcast, ‘the future of money in 30 minutes’, is well-positioned to see where things might be heading.

A former banker, Ruth now consults a variety of clients as an expert on financial technology, infrastructure and regulation.

Here are some of the topics she discusses with New Money Review editor Paul Amery during the podcast:

· The emergence of new financial infrastructures

· The path to speedier financial settlement

· The role of blockchain in infrastructure reform

· How to ensure a level playing field for different fintech players

· The importance of digital identity

· Open-source versus proprietary technology standards

· How to survive and prosper in the new digital finance economy

Facebook’s Libra project, announced this summer, shook up politicians and regulators by showing how quickly the digital money race is accelerating.

To understand what's going on, we need to look at a few key areas of competition, says Huw van Steenis, a banker at UBS and one of the world's leading finance analysts.

“Libra has brought four issues together,” he says.

“First, there’s the tokenisation of money, and how this can be used to reduce friction in the system."

"Second, there’s the question of whether payment should be done on bank infrastructure rails, credit card rails or a completely new set of rails, as in China."

"Third, who should control digital wallets? Should it be big tech companies, telcos or banks?"

"Finally, who gets to control the data and the ecosystem that goes around it?”

Listen to our interview with van Steenis in the latest episode of our podcast.

There’s a secret country out there that’s invisible to most of us. It’s called Moneyland.

This country doesn’t discriminate against outsiders. It’s open to anyone, so long as they can afford the entrance fee.

It’s very big and very important – the country may contain an eighth of all the wealth in the world.

It’s a virtual place. You can’t find it on the map.

But it’s also a very real, physical place. The person right next to you, right now, might be living in Moneyland.

The house next door might be in Moneyland, even though it has a street name and number just like yours.

Moneyland is where the world’s super-rich, its most powerful businessmen, its best-connected politicians and its cleverest criminals all hang out.

How can we begin to understand this place, which we can’t really see or measure?

Oliver Bullough, an award-winning writer and my guest on this New Money Review podcast, can help us answer that question.

In June, the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), a group of 36 governments seeking to address money laundering, said it wants to tighten its rules on the transfer of virtual assets like bitcoin.

New FATF guidelines place an obligation on cryptocurrency exchanges—where the general public can convert cryptocurrencies to traditional money, and vice versa—to obtain, hold, and transmit information about their users.

The new rules will apply to anyone sending or receiving virtual assets like bitcoin to or from an exchange.

If followed to their logical conclusion, the guidelines could split bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies into two, say participants on the podcast. But will governments succeed?

Listen to this podcast to find out.

Paul Amery of New Money Review interviews David Carlisle, head of community at Elliptic, and Obi Nwosu, chief executive at Coinfloor.

The worlds of traditional finance and cryptocurrency/blockchain are still far apart. But we should keep our eyes open for signs of a longer-term convergence between legacy and decentralised finance, says Chris Thomas, an entrepreneur and former investment banker and asset manager.

Blockchain can easily replicate some key functions of investment banks and asset managers at a much lower cost, says Thomas, who is our guest in the latest episode of the New Money Review podcast, ‘the future of money in thirty minutes’.

What do Wikipedia—an online encyclopedia—and bitcoin—internet money—have in common? Both are open-source projects. This type of initiative is playing an increasingly powerful role in many areas of life.

Open-source networks function by having open collaboration between their participants. But what does that mean?

An open-source system tends to have a clearly defined goal.

In bitcoin’s case, it’s to serve as a peer-to-peer version of money: money that isn’t controlled by any particular government or entity

In Wikipedia’s case it’s to provide a neutrally written summary of mainstream knowledge.

But having a clear goal is not the same thing as having a formal organisational structure. In an open-source project there is no boss issuing directions from above. And there is also often very loose coordination between those taking part.

All the same, these projects don’t run on autopilot. There must be some human politics involved. So what are those politics?

To explore that question, New Money Review interviews Jaya Klara Brekke, a postdoctoral fellow at Durham University’s Geography Department, where she researches future cryptoeconomics.