An ecosystem has emerged, from miners to intermediaries, all seeking to expand into digital finance. Crypto enthusiasts marvel at the rise of the crypto market, with many feeling they should take their chances on the crypto gamble. They aspired to realise an anarchistic utopia of a stable currency free from public scrutiny.Īlmost 15 years on, crypto-assets are what everyone’s talking about.

Their 2008 white paper shows a great fascination with technology, notably cryptography, but not necessarily an in-depth understanding of payment and money issues. Satoshi Nakamoto – or rather the software developers using that pseudonym – created the source code of what they thought could be decentralised digital cash.

Greed and lawlessness turned this promised land into the Wild West, where the few exploited the dream of the many.įast-forward a century and a half and, amid the global financial crisis, growing distrust of banks, coupled with technological innovation, gave rise to a new dream – a digital gold rush beyond state control. Speech by Fabio Panetta, Member of the Executive Board of the ECB, at Columbia Universityġ70 years ago Americans pushed westward across the frontier to seek their fortune in the gold rush.

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