英语论文网

to grow, it seems almost inevitable that so too will recognition and trust of cyberspace's diverse new means of payment. Something else we learn from monetary history is that even if adoption of a new money begins slowly, once a critical mass is attained widespread acceptance does tend to follow. Confidence in new e-currencies can be enhanced through effective marketing programs or with clever advertising techniques. Most of all, success will depend on the inventiveness of issuing companies in designing features to encourage use. These bells and whistles might include favorable rates of exchange when amounts of electronic money are initially acquired; attractive rates of interest on unused balances; assured access to a broad network of other transactors and purveyors; and discounts or bonuses when the electronic money rather than more traditional currency is used for purchases or investments. Sooner or later, at least some of these efforts to whet user appetite can be expected to achieve success.
Most critical of all is the question of value: how to safely preserve the purchasing power of electronic money balances over time. Initially at least, this is likely to require a promise of full and unrestricted convertibility into more conventional legal tender - just as early paper monies first gained wide acceptance by a promise of convertibility into precious metal. (10) But just as paper monies eventually took on a life of their own, delinked from a specie base, so too might electronic money one day be able to dispense with all such formal guarantees as a result of growing use and familiarity. That day will not come soon, but it does seem the most plausible scenario of the more distant future given present trends. As The Economist speculated a few years back, over the long term "it is possible to imagine the development of e-cash reaching [a] final evolutionary stage... in which convertibility into legal tender ceases to be a condition for electronic money; and electronic money will thereby become indistinguishable from -- because it will be the same as -- other, more traditional sorts of money" (The Economist 1994: 23). Once that stage is reached, perhaps one or two generations from now, we could find all sorts of new currencies competing for acceptance in the marketplace. For banker Walter Wriston, the future has already arrived:
The Information Standard has replaced the gold-exchange standard.... As in ancient times, anyone can announce the issuance of his or her brand of private cash and then try to convince people that it has value. There is no lack of entrants to operate these new private mints ranging from Microsoft to Mondex, and more enter every day (Wriston 1998: 340).
How many?
How many electronic currencies might eventually emerge? Almost certainly it will not be the "thousand of forms of currency" predicted by monetary historian Jack Weatherford, who suggests that "in the future, everyone will be issuing currency - banks, corporations, credit card companies, finance, companies, local communities, computer companies, Net browsers, and even individuals. We might have Warren Buffet or William Gates money" (Weatherford 1998: 100). Colorful though Weatherford's prediction may be, it neglects the power of economies of scale in monetary use, which dictates a preference for fewer rather than more currencies in circulation.
The appeal of any money, economists agree, is a