| Institutions connect the past,the present and the future,so history is a gradual process of institutional evolution to a large extent.Theodore Schultz(1968)once said that money is the system.Money is an ancient system,which serves the transaction of human society.The essence of transaction is to realize the transfer of products or services,which is accompanied by the reverse transfer of the same quantity and value.No matter what external form money presents,it is a natural carrier of this value transfer.From the primitive barter,simple commodity economy to developed market economy,money is accompanied with it in the process of human social and economic development.The essence of money is a kind of right,that is,the right to obtain the future value generally accepted by the society.It has been going on for thousands of years and has never changed.During this period,the development of productivity gave birth to new demand,and technology iteration promoted the evolution of money from physical,metal and paper money to electronic money,so as to improve the efficiency of money circulation,reduce transaction costs and improve consumer welfare.From the historical evolution and internal logic of the development of money and its extended form,every technological revolution contains the reality of the change of money form.After the 21 st century,with the rapid development of Internet,big data,cloud computing,artificial intelligence and other information technologies,economic digitization and social life digitization have become the general trend.At the same time,the influence of financial technology on the evolution of money is further deepened,and the form of money and its circulation mode are becoming more and more digital and networked,giving birth to a new form of money: digital money.The emergence of digital currency in the historical stage has aroused great attention,which constitutes the remodeling and innovation of traditional currency circulation and economic rules.As one of the important categories,legal digital currency will build a new monetary prospect,and at the same time,it will make the traditional monetary theory appear "Aphasia" to a certain extent,which needs new theoretical support and explanation logic.From the perspective of law and economics,legal digital currency is a legal payment tool and value voucher that is authorized by law to be issued by the central bank to the society,which is based on cryptography technology,completely relies on digital information storage and payment transaction,has the form and function of cryptocurrency,is widely used in the issuing country and has legal compensation.Coase's(1937,1960)theory of the internal relationship between transaction costs and institutional arrangements shows that under the condition of a given level of technology,people create or choose a certain system to reduce transaction costs,which leads to the emergence and change of some market systems.The same is true of the monetary system.The ideal legal digital currency has many characteristics,such as non repeated spending,controllable anonymity,unforgeability,system independence,security,transmissibility,traceability,separability,programmability,fairness and so on.After the legal digital currency is issued,it will compete with the credit cash and electronic currency in the current monetary system.Legal digital currency has many characteristics and functions,which will effectively improve the defects of credit cash,and can have the advantages of electronic currency,so as to further reduce transaction costs and increase value utility.Therefore,the overall competitive performance of legal digital currency will be stronger than credit cash and electronic currency,which can effectively improve the security and efficiency of the monetary system.Although the nominal values of credit cash,electronic currency and legal digital currency are equal,legal digital currency has a strong competitive advantage,which will make it have a higher actual value in the public recognition,higher acceptance and utilization rate,and a greater probability of becoming the dominant currency in the monetary system.With the issuance of legal digital currency and the expansion of circulation scope,the improvement of the value of the legal digital currency on the credit cash and electronic currency will inevitably have an impact on the monetary control,monetary policy implementation and payment system operation of the central bank,bringing benefits.First,issuing legal digital currency helps to strengthen the monetary control of the central bank.The issue and circulation of legal digital currency will change the current monetary system structure,which will make the dual currency structure mainly composed of credit cash and electronic currency increase the legal digital currency to form a ternary monetary structure.In the current currency circulation operation,except for the electronic form of the reserve fund of the central bank,the vast majority of them are deposit currency and prepayment currency,which weakens the status of legal currency and weakens the control of the central bank on the basic currency.The issue and circulation of legal digital currency will replace some electronic currency,which can reduce the substitution effect of electronic currency on credit cash.At the same time,the legal digital currency is controllable and traceable to the central bank,which can improve the control of the central bank over the overall monetary system.Secondly,issuing legal digital currency is helpful to optimize the implementation of monetary policy.In the social comprehensive circulation rather than closed environment,the legal digital currency is testable,traceable and controllable.Its issuance and circulation can improve the measurement degree of money supply and currency circulation speed,and the analysis basis of big data is more solid,and the control of monetary policy is more accurate.The central bank regulates the deposit interest rate of the bank by adjusting the legal digital currency interest rate,and then transmits it to the bank loan interest rate.This helps to improve the transmission of the policy interest rate of the central bank to the medium and long-term credit rate,and to improve the situation of the poor transmission of the policy interest rate to the loan interest rate in China.By taking the interest rate into account of the legal digital currency or collecting the custody fee for the legal digital currency wallet as appropriate,it is essentially equivalent to implementing the negative interest rate policy,thus breaking the restriction of the lower limit of zero interest rate and releasing the space of monetary policy.Legal digital currency can optimize the current monetary policy regulation framework and improve the monetary policy transmission mechanism.Finally,the issue of legal digital currency helps to improve the operation of the payment system.Due to the insufficient function of credit cash payment,the central bank "has to" transfer the right of currency issuance to the private sector,and the private sector provides supplementary payment services.However,at the same time,the social payment chain continues to extend,and some payment behaviors cannot be effectively supervised.After issuing legal digital currency,the central bank can abandon the traditional mode of "the private sector provides payment services and the central bank provides value guarantee".Due to its transmissibility,traceability,programmability and other technical characteristics,legal digital currency enables any payment behavior to be tracked.In this way,abnormal transactions can be found in time,payment transparency can be increased,regulatory penetration can be enhanced,and the regulatory burden of the central bank and the value guarantee for the private sector can be reduced.In terms of the protection of consumers' rights and interests,legal digital currency is legal currency,which is higher than electronic currency in credit rating.At the same time,it is password currency,which has better security.In terms of cross-border payment,the printing,issuing,carrying,transportation and storage of credit notes are complex and not suitable for cross-border payment,which has hindered the international circulation of money for a long time.Issuing legal digital currency will enrich and strengthen the cross-border payment function of RMB and create more favorable conditions for RMB internationalization.There is no doubt that the legal digital currency is faced with greater practical demand,and it will be the result of the mandatory institutional change promoted by the top-down government.On the one hand,because of its different technical characteristics from the credit cash,it will bring about the differences of behavior patterns between the actors,and bring about new problems that the traditional legal tender does not have.On the other hand,only under the existing legal system can we judge whether a specific transferable property right constitutes money.Legal digital currency needs to be authorized and regulated by the monetary law to perform the function of legal currency.According to the theoretical analysis framework of supply and demand of institutional arrangement,the supply of current monetary system rules in China can not fully meet the institutional demand of legal digital currency.First,the current rules of currency issuance cannot fully apply to legal digital currency.The generation,allocation,counting,checking,circulation and destruction of legal digital currency all depend on the network system.The original credit cash issuing,transferring,clearing,destroying and returning cage are not applicable in the mode of regional and entity bank as carrier and corresponding management mechanism.Second,the current currency operation rules do not contain the content of legal currency swap.Once the legal digital currency is issued,there will be many types of legal currency in the legal currency system in China,which will inevitably lead to the exchange between different currencies.This is not and cannot be stipulated in advance in the traditional monetary system.Third,the current monetary system does not contain the norms of direct contact between the central bank and the holder of currency.The value transfer effect of the holder to the legal digital currency needs to be confirmed by the central bank.The identity information and account information of the holder need to be registered and managed in the central bank system,which will directly produce the corresponding rights and obligations.Fourth,the current monetary system does not contain the rule of controllable anonymity.The controllable anonymity of legal digital currency can help to investigate and crack down on illegal crimes.But how to define the power boundary of the authority requires the legal provisions and the balance of interests between the privacy protection of the holder and the fight against the illegal crime.Around the legal digital currency governance,the current monetary system is not only suitable for the legal digital currency,but also the lack of appropriate monetary system rules will become a major obstacle to the innovation of legal digital currency.Legal digital currency is not a simple upgrade of monetary technology,but a profound policy and legal issue,which needs to be operated in a stable and sustainable institutional framework,and needs to be supplemented and improved.For the relationship between the new system and the old system,just like Wittgenstein's "rope theory",each new rope may not be the same as the previous one,but they are interrelated,forming a kind of "family similarity".The same is true of the institutional supply of legal digital currency,which should be treated with a development thinking of historical and current connection.For the system supply structure of legal digital currency,the following system supply ideas and legislative model suggestions are put forward.First of all,it is necessary to bring the legal digital currency into the category of RMB,clarify the legal attribute and legal status of the legal digital currency,and endow the legal digital currency with compulsory legal compensation,which is the starting point of the legal attribute of the legal digital currency.Secondly,it puts forward the specific ideas of system supply from five aspects,that is,clarifying the basic framework and system rules of legal digital currency issuance,improving the payment and settlement system in the operation of legal digital currency,innovating the legal digital currency money laundering and crime prevention and verification system,improving the legal digital currency information security protection rules,and innovating the legal digital currency supervision rules.Third,in the short term,it is suggested that the relevant laws and regulations that may be involved in the issuance and operation of legal digital currency should be separately amended or expanded to cover legal digital currency,so as to meet the needs of the rules of the issuance and operation of legal digital currency in the short term.In the long run,it is necessary for China to formulate a basic monetary law to do a good job in the top-level design of the principle of legislation,to clarify the specific meaning and specific effectiveness of legal tender and token bills;to bring credit cash and legal digital currency into the scope of the basic monetary law,to unify and clarify the basic rules of legal tender;to do a good job in the civil,economic,administrative,criminal and other legal regulations In order to reduce the conflict of laws,this paper puts forward the principle of convergence and interaction of monetary provisions in the scope.Under the basic law of currency,it will be explained and embodied by its subordinate rules,and gradually establish a complete standard system of monetary system under the guidance of the basic law of currency.Under the overall framework of the supply of legal digital currency system,the most important thing is to build the system of legal digital currency issuance and operation,mainly for the establishment of legal digital currency issuance system framework,clear legal digital currency operation and circulation management mechanism,and configure the rights and obligations of participants in the issuance and operation.First,establish the legal digital currency issuing system structure.On the basis of the approval of indirect issuance mode,the paper puts forward four issuance objectives and five issuing principles of legal digital currency,establishes a double-layer currency issuing structure,namely,according to the current RMB management principle,the issuance and return of legal digital currency is based on the binary system of "central bank commercial bank",adheres to the "centralized" management mode,and utilizes the current commercial bank to pay The settlement system realizes the release and recovery of legal digital currency.In this way,the release and return of legal digital currency is the digital wallet of legal digital currency in digital currency account or user side,the legal digital currency issuing Library of central bank and the legal digital currency bank of commercial bank.The process of transfer and exchange among these three key elements is also the process of the emergence,flow,inventory check and extinction of legal digital currency.The second is to clarify the operation and circulation management mechanism of legal digital currency.In the construction of circulation environment for the operation of legal digital currency,it is necessary to establish a dual account system with legal digital currency account and bank deposit account,develop the internal digital currency payment system of commercial banks,and meet the requirements of opening and maintenance of digital currency wallet,binding and maintenance of digital currency Wallet and bank deposit account,cash deposit and withdrawal of digital currency account,electronic currency and digital goods Currency exchange and other functions.At this time,there are two kinds of fiat money in the monetary system,and the operation and circulation of money will be correspondingly divided into "credit cash circulation system",the mapping of Credit Cash-"electronic money circulation system" and "Fiat digital money circulation system",which clarify the currency conversion rules of the three circulation systems.At the same time,we should improve the circulation supporting management system such as the large amount cash management system.Third,the rights and obligations of participants in distribution and operation.In the process of issuing and operating legal digital currency,the central bank,commercial banks and legal digital currency holders will have a direct legal relationship different from credit cash.The public's legal digital currency right will also have its particularity on the basis of ordinary legal currency right,which is mainly manifested in its currency option right,currency exchange right,payment confirmation right and compensation claim right.In this way,the rights and obligations of the central bank,commercial banks,legal digital currency holders and the rights and obligations of the credit cash situation have some overlap and obvious differences,and then the main rights and obligations structure of each participant is configured.In a word,from the technical level,the technology of legal digital currency is changing with each passing day;from the legal and economic aspects,the legal digital currency is still very young and needs to be launched.The research and practice of legal digital currency is still in constant exploration and innovation.At present,we must pay attention to the coordination and unity of technical means,mechanism design and laws and regulations,so as to build a legal digital currency system with security and flexibility,concise and efficient,and in line with China's national conditions.The influence and future development prospects of legal digital currency are extremely broad.It is a new thing that is developing and changing.It is difficult for anyone to predict how fast it will develop and how it will change our life. |
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