Digital technologies are challenging the traditional role of commercial banks as gatekeepers of payment systems. Benjamin Franklin, one of the founding fathers of the United States, may have had some insight into this changing role. His four questions around money are applicable to today’s need for payment systems to evolve with digital assets: What is money? Who should create it? What should backstop money? How should money come into circulation? This paper explores these four questions through a twenty-first-century perspective. Although the United States wants to maintain the dollar’s position as the world’s reserve currency through the adoption of stablecoins, declining trust in US rule of law has forced some countries to develop their own central bank digital currencies and digital infrastructure.
