Bitcoin and Blockchain: Is money an algorithm?

Abstract

The benefits of Blockchain technology are innumerable and are spreading in several areas to varying degrees from high-tech industry through medicine to finance, crypto-currencies more precisely. We cannot talk about bitcoin without mentioning Blockchain, it is said that bitcoin does not exist without Blockchain. Bitcoin and Blockchain technology has changed the translational conception of money, we are talking about a currency without physical existence and expenses without additional costs, a currency hosted in very secure servers created by a group of people and without institutional control at like bank money, created by central banks and seriously controlled by the financial authorities. In this work we will first try to present a state of the art describing a brief history of money before giving the classic definition of the latter (bank money), its forms and its functions to try to find the points of convergence and points of divergence with bitcoin before focusing in a second time on the definition and characteristics of bitcoin by insisting on the distinction between the two (bitcoin and blockchain) by emphasizing more on bitcoin on its strengths and its weaknesses before drawing the boundaries between bitcoin and bank money to answer the main question of this work: Is money an algorithm? In other words, is bitcoin a currency ?

Keywords: Blockchain, bitcoin, bank money, bank, cryptocurrency.

JEL Classification:  Z 23

Paper type: Theoretical research