RESEARCH ARTICLE

Bruno De Conti & Robert Guttmann | Review of Political Economy

The idea of ‘digital money’ has now matured into efforts to create a new monetary regime that befits the progressive digitalization of capitalist economies. Much of the world, notably China and the European Union, is preparing the transition to electronic money by having its various central banks issue their own digital currencies (CBDCs). With the Trump Administration betting on private cryptocurrencies, the United States has opted for a different route. These divergencies in approach by the world’s three leading power centers reflect differences in strategy how best to organize their economies and societies for the digital age. Concerning their respective monetary regimes, they have different attitudes about the role of banks and other financial institutions, let alone how they view the role of the state in their ‘mixed’ economy. Our article aims to analyze these different digital-money initiatives, and how they will play out transforming the international monetary and financial system (IMFS) amidst growing geopolitical tensions between the world’s three leading power centers.

Full article: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09538259.2025.2573356