Exploring the transformation of value in the digital age

By Michael J. Casey, Chief Content Officer

Dec. 24, 2021

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It was the year of crypto! Record high prices for multiple tokens; institutions, including hedge funds and even pension funds, buying into bitcoin and the dipping their toes into ether and decentralized finance (DeFi); El Salvador making bitcoin legal tender; the non-fungible token (NFT) phenomenon that’s attracted every major celebrity and media brand; Coinbase going public; the explosion of decentralized autonomous organizations (DAO); the sharpening of regulatory battle lines in the U.S.; and a mining crackdown in China that reshaped the entire Bitcoin network.

For this, the first of two holiday editions of this newsletter, we frame this remarkable year in terms of how, in different ways, money was reimagined in 2021. We look at five themes, with links to past Money Reimagined newsletters and podcasts that spoke to those themes.

Speaking of the “Money Reimagined” podcast, we are running holiday editions these next two weeks. This week we highlight my favorite episode from 2021, one in which we interviewed my co-host Sheila Warren’s aunt, the human rights activist Usha Ramanathan, about India’s centralized ID program, Aadhaar. With help from Filecoin Foundation General Counsel Marta Belcher, we explored the threat such systems of digital surveillance pose to privacy and, by extension, to the core of our humanity.

Have a listen after reading the newsletter.

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Rachel Sun/CoinDesk

… A meme. Whether it was the mania for dogecoin, the surge of interest in non-fungible tokens or the capacity for Wall Street Bets to set the price of “meme stocks” like GameStop, we witnessed a strange merging of finance and popular culture. As incredulous as people were in both traditional financial and Bitcoin circles, we at Money Reimagined felt somewhat vindicated. The trend underscored a theme we’ve explored in both the newsletter and the podcast: that monetary systems require a shared belief in their common value. This era of reimagined money is bound to see the deployment of art, iconography, stories and other cultural products to bolster the sense of belonging and belief among communities that form around these new systems.

… A politicized idea. For the past century, no one really questioned the nature and structure of our systems of money. Money was issued by governments and it was run by banks. End of story. With the emergence of Bitcoin, there was suddenly a new way to think about things. But for most of its existence, the political class felt it could simply ignore it. In 2021, that blissful ignorance suddenly became impossible.

We first saw this with the debate over the infrastructure bill, most importantly in the U.S. Senate, when the impositions of a contentious tax reporting provision for cryptocurrency sales had the ironic effect of demonstrating that crypto had arrived in Washington. The fact that legislators wanted to tax crypto was a sign that it was recognized as a long-term prospect, a reliable source of tax revenue. Just as importantly, the crypto lobby, though ultimately unsuccessful in its bid to force changes to those more draconian parts of the provision, showed its clout on Capitol Hill has grown significantly. It forged a large, bipartisan coalition of lawmakers to support its preferred amendments and showed it will be a force going forward.

Read the full column here.

This chart doesn’t need much explanation. Bitcoin had a busy, volatile year.

The lessons drawn from this chart are contradictory. On the one hand, it speaks to the power of overly influential investor/talking heads in driving prices – whether it’s Tesla’s mercurial CEO, Elon Musk, whose flip-flop views on crypto fosters gut-wrenching volatility, or MicroStrategy’s Michael Saylor, who in constantly putting his money where his mouth is converted himself to a darling of bitcoin fans.

On the other hand, it was a year that reminded us of the power governments and regulators have to influence crypto markets – from China’s crackdown on mining and cryptocurrencies to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission’s approval of a futures-based bitcoin exchange-traded fund (ETF.)

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If you haven't checked out some of CoinDesk's end-of-year content, you're missing out. Here's a sampling:

Culture Week: a series of features, op-ed and research pieces about how crypto is impacting media and entertainment and creating its own culture.

Most Influential 2021: Our pick of the 50 people who defined the year in crypto, presented with original portraits from 10 daring artists.

Future of Money Week: a theme week devoted to how money will change in the next decade. The takeaway? It gets weirder.