Money Without Boundaries

Discover how blockchain will facilitate a new currency that will transcend space and time

Largely inspired by The Denationalization of Money by Fredrich Hayek, Money Without Boundaries’ ideological foundation is also inspired by economists and thought leaders like Milton Friedman and Irving Fisher, advancements in capital markets over the past 50 years, and the convergence of old and new technologies. Author Thomas J. Anderson explains how blockchain acts as the filter and the glue, making it all possible.

Compared with other currencies, blockchain-managed money markets are more straightforward and transparent. It is easier to monitor, understand, and assess the quality of their "full-faith and credit." Money Without Boundaries shows how not only money, but also the process of borrowing and lending, will evolve to be conducted in a 100% trusted, secure, transparent, open architecture environment. Anderson begins with a history of money and discusses the rise of cryptocurrency, concluding with a comparison of decentralized money markets to all other alternatives.

Money without Boundaries:

• Demonstrates how blockchain technology allows full transparency

• Explains how blockchain makes it possible for money to be fully commoditized

• Explains how this fully market-based, decentralized, self-regulating system has vast implications throughout the global financial system

• Shows how everyone will benefit when they have the opportunity to compete on “full faith in credit”

If you are interested in cryptocurrency, money, monetary theory, or understanding how the applied uses of blockchain technology will change your everyday life, this is essential reading.

Preface xi

Acknowledgments xxi

Introduction 1

What is Money? 2

Money as a Store of Value 5

Demise of the Gold Standard 6

Planting the Seed for the Denationalization of Money 9

Part One: The Foundation 11

Chapter 1: Money Through Time – A Different Perspective 13

“The Holy Gift of Free Gold” 17

National Debt, National Blessing? 18

Following the Yellow Brick Road 21

“Breaking of the Gold Fetters” 24

“Let Me Lay to Rest the Bugaboo…” 27

Chapter 2: The Fundamentals of Money 31

Narrow Money versus Broad Money 33

The Theory of Money and Credit 35

Full Faith and Credit: Money is the Government’s Debt 37

Chapter 3: Banking – An Overview 41

A System That Multiplies Money 43

Money is Credit, and Credit is Money 45

“Not for Profit, Not for Charity, but for Service” 45

Chapter 4: The Denationalization of Money 47

Irving Fisher: Abolish Fractional Reserve Banking 48

Milton Friedman and Setting the Nominal Interest Rate to Zero 50

Friedrich Hayek: Denationalize Money 51

Chapter 5: The Rise of Cryptocurrency 55

Coins and Tokens 57

Is it a Security or a Utility? The Howey Test 60

Stablecoin: Establishing Trust and Stability 62

How Should We Value Coins and Tokens? 63

Chapter 6: The Role Model 69

Everything the Banking System is Not 71

Part Two: The Four Pillars – Our Building Blocks 77

Chapter 7: Pillar 1 – Modern Portfolio Theory and the Risk-Free Asset 79

Evolving Modern Portfolio Theory and the Risk-Free Asset 83

Summary of Pillar 1 84

Chapter 8: Pillar 2 – The Credit Theory of Money 87

Creating Money Under the Credit Theory of Money 88

Creating a Medium of Exchange 91

Summary of Pillar 2 93

Chapter 9: Pillar 3 – Solving the Trust Gap = Blockchain 95

It All Started with the Cloud 98

What, Exactly, is Blockchain? 100

Why Should We Care? 103

How Does Blockchain Work? 103

Why Would Anybody Do This? 106

Who Maintains the Network? 107

Blockchain Components and Ecosystem 108

Protocol Tokens and App Coins/Tokens: Working Together 112

The Other Layers 114

Summary of Pillar 3 115

Chapter 10: Pillar 4 – Capital Markets as a “Technology” 117

What are Capital Markets? 118

What are Money Market Accounts? 119

What’s in a Money Market Fund? 121

How Efficient is the Repurchase Market? 123

How Does This Relate to Our Third Pillar, Blockchain? 124

What is Securitization, and Why the Prejudice Against It? 125

How Securitization Works 126

How Subordination Works 128

Slicing and Dicing Our Way to Risk-Free 129

Summary of Pillar 4 130

Part Three: The Concept 133

Chapter 11: Transcending Space and Time 135

From Star Trek to the Death Star 136

“Copper, Beads, and Such Like Trash” as Money 138

A Store of Value that Transcends Space and Time 140

Chapter 12: Bringing the Building Blocks Together 141

A Known Store of Value: The Blockchain Revolution 143

A Different Objective: Zero Risk 144

Weight, Mass, and the “Risk-Free Rate” 144

The Kilogram and the Specimen 145

An Elastic Definition of the Specimen 149

A Sample Specimen 151

Convergence Checklist 154

Chapter 13: A Neural Network Begins 155

A Perspective on a Decentralized Market in Money 156

The Other Sides of Zero 159

The Paradigm Begins to Shift 160

The Paradigm Shifts: One Loan 162

The Neural Network is Born 164

Chapter 14: Conclusion 165

Securitizing Individuals at an Individual Level with Blockchain 170

Welcome to a Whole New World, Mr. Keynes 172

Appendix A: The Future of Money – A Credit-Based Society 175

Structural Superiority 177

Illustration 178

Appendix B: A House of Cards 179

A Debt-Fueled Illusion 181

Our Perspective Must Shift 182

Glossary 185

Resource Guide 191

Bibliography 207

About the Author 221

Endnotes 223

Index 241

THOMAS J. ANDERSON is the founder and chairman of both Anasova and Supernova Lending. Before he founded Supernova, Tom worked in investment banking and wealth management for Wells Fargo, Deutsche Bank, Merrill Lynch, and Morgan Stanley, where he served as executive director of Morgan Stanley Wealth Management. He is a New York Times bestselling author and acclaimed financial planning expert. Tom's books have been featured in numerous media outlets around the world.

Traditionally, money has been a safe and reliable store of value. For thousands of years, society focused on money of limited supply, such as bartering and commodity money???—???primarily a gold standard. We then moved to "full faith and credit" currencies, or an unlimited money supply backed by government's ability to repay it with future taxation. The value derived or perceived from these currencies is primarily tied to beliefs related to the underlying economic value of the currency issuer.

Money is much more than the physical cash you have in your wallet. Large transactions, including those of large financial institutions, are mostly cashless. Credit cards are used to make the majority of purchases in the developed world. The preference for cashless transactions is already here; virtual and mobile payments allow people to make monetary transactions quickly, easily, and securely. We have the technology, but we lack a standardized, universal store of value. Something that doesn't yet exist: a market-based, risk-free, self-stabilizing global currency.

When you think about cryptocurrency, you most likely think of bitcoin. Blockchain, the revolutionary technology behind bitcoin that digitally secures the ownership of an item and its full history, has been used to create a finite number of bitcoin, but it can also create an infinite number of items of limited supply. Once we're able to create an infinite number of items with limited supply, then limited supply by itself is no longer valuable. Similarly, an unlimited supply of items with economic value is also worthless in the long run. The goal for society is to have both limited supply and economic value, and this is the objective of Money Without Boundaries.

Money Without Boundaries is about the creation of a new global currency facilitated by blockchain technology. Unlike traditional currencies, such as the dollar, yen, or euro, this currency strives to be a risk-free store of value. And unlike bitcoin, which tethers to a finite number of units, this store of value tethers to zero risk. As a result, it is constrained not by an arbitrary number of units, but by market forces of supply and demand. A privately controlled, market-based currency is not a new concept. But only now do we possess the technology to use theories from some of the greatest economic thinkers in history???—???Plato, Adam Smith, Irving Fisher, Milton Freidman, and Fredrich Hayek, among others???—???to transform the we way we think about and use money. This book is a bridge connecting old ideas to new technologies.

Money can be fully commoditized in a decentralized, self-regulating, not-for profit, free-market system. Blockchain will give everyone a decentralized, safe, anonymous, and secure store of value???—???and revolutionize the global financial system in the process.

DISCOVER HOW BLOCKCHAIN TECHNOLOGY WILL ESTABLISH A NEW GLOBAL CURRENCY THAT TRANSCENDS SPACE AND TIME

We typically categorize "money" into earnings, such as income from a job, and as a store of value, like cash in the bank, to use for purchasing goods and services. Money Without Boundaries separates income and store of value to create a decentralized perfect store of value, the risk-free asset.

Blockchain technology digitally secures the ownership and full history of an item, making it far more transparent and straightforward than other currencies. This revolutionary technology enables money to be fully commoditized in a market-based, decentralized, and self-regulating system. Blockchain levels the playing field—everyone can make secure, anonymous financial transactions without any gaps in trust. Large central banks and governments are not necessary to monitor and assess the "full faith and credit" of blockchain-managed money markets, to the great benefit of the average person.

Money Without Boundaries is a must-have resource for anyone interested in understanding how cryptocurrency and the applied uses of blockchain technology will change the financial system and enhance the lives of billions of people around the world. Author Thomas Anderson explains how blockchain will create a new currency guided by the market forces of supply and demand, transforming the process of buying, borrowing, and lending forever. From the history of money and the rise of cryptocurrency to how decentralized money markets compare to all other alternatives, this straightforward, reader-friendly book provides the information you need to connect old ideas of money to the new reality of blockchain technology.