At the excellent CSFI round table to discuss Simon Gleeson’s book “The Legal Concept of Money”, Charles Goodhart and I were invited on to the panel to discuss the subject (particularly in relation to cryptocurrencies). Simon is a respected (to say the least) expert on banking law kso as you can imagine his opinions were of great interest and very valuable. One topic that naturally occupied some of the discussion was “legal tender”. Simon was quite clear: the concept of legal tender is tangential to the debate and of almost complete irrelevance. The reason it keeps cropping up
Forum friend Ian Grigg, who I always take very seriously indeed on any such topic, wrote about Corda on his blog and concluded with a powerful statement. Bitcoin told the users it wanted an unstoppable currency - sure, works for a small group but not for the mass market. Ethereum told their users they need an unstoppable machine - which worked how spectacularly with the DAO? Not. What. We. Wanted. Corda is the only game in town because it's the only one that asked the users. It's that simple. From Financial Cryptography: Corda Day - a new force xxx It seems to me, however, what Ian is pointing to as the greatest strength of their approach is also the greatest weakness. A staple feature of unimaginative management consultants presentations about innovation is some variation on the statement by Henry Ford that if you had asked users what they wanted, they would have asked for faster horses coupled with some variation on the statement by Steve jobs that it was pointless ask...
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