5Proteiform and Multi-sectoral Transformations

5.1. Tokenization of the economy and bartering

In order to study the tokenization of the economy, it is necessary to look at the qualification of crypto-assets in relation to pre-existing categories and to identify the different categories of crypto-assets.

5.1.1. Progressive evolution of the monetary approach to crypto-assets

From a monetary, banking, and financial perspective, crypto-assets could currently be described as digital units, mainly fungible, issued by a multitude of mainly private actors, to which users attribute a speculative value and/or a future use value on ecosystems.

The classic functional definition of currencies is that a currency must meet the following conditions: a unit of account, a reserve of value, and a trading vehicle. The first research on crypto-currencies, focusing on Bitcoin, mostly denied the qualification based on this definition1. In the early days of Bitcoin, it was very difficult to acquire it without mining activity (in the absence of trading platforms) and it was almost impossible to buy anything with; see, for example, the story of an American engineer who had difficulty buying two pizzas with 10,000 Bitcoins in 20102.

Currently, crypto-currencies and particularly Bitcoin have become quite liquid and more and more people recognize that some crypto-currencies at least partially meet the functional criteria of currency3 and deserve to be taken into account in the framework of monetary policies ...

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