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This article seeks to define the boundaries of money in the context of proprietary taxonomy in New Zealand. It suggests that the traditional legal concept of money exclusively based on state issued (fiat) currency is dated, as does not accommodate the near-universal use of bank money in commercial transactions, nor the recent technological changes introduced by virtual currencies. As long as something functions as a means of payment and the holder has the right to exchange it for legal tender, the divide between mutually agreed payment obligations into those made on the base of fiat currencies and those not, becomes artificial. In providing responses to similar commercial arrangements and parties' legitimate expectations, not only coins and banknotes, but also balances held by customers in banking institutions, foreign money, and digital currencies, should qualify as money for private law purposes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The advent of a retail central bank digital currency (CBDC) could reshape the US payments system. A retail CBDC would be a digital representation of the US dollar in the form of an account or token that is widely accessible to the general public. It would be a third form of US fiat money that is created and issued by the Federal Reserve and complementary to physical cash. CBDC proposals have suggested a myriad of retail CBDC design models with an overwhelming interest in a retail CBDC that either implements a centralized ledger system or some form of a distributed ledger system to process payments. The technology of a retail CBDC would enable instantaneous payments for consumers and greater transparency for government officials. Additionally, CBDC proponents are championing retail CBDC as a tool to promote financial inclusion. However, antiquated US privacy protections may be inadequate to safeguard against the potential risks to individual privacy within digital payments and consequently undermine financial inclusion. A retail CBDC system that is under the control of the Federal Reserve could bolster regulatory compliance and oversight but also exacerbate workarounds by government entities in the current US privacy framework that are concerning for individual privacy in the age of big data and dataveillance. A proper privacy framework governing retail CBDC records would alleviate risks to privacy and enhance public trust in a retail CBDC system. Refining the Privacy Act of 1974 or creating a new regulatory framework that is informed by both the Privacy Act and the impact of innovative data analytics would help balance the inherent tension between privacy and transparency of user identity and transactions within a retail CBDC system under the control of the Federal Reserve. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article locates Locke within broader early modern European debates about the relationship between money, precious metal, and sovereignty. Against this background, I read Locke's metallism as a considered (if nonetheless problematic) response to the practical implications of the intensification of interstate monetary movements. Locke used an emphasis on the interstate dimensions of money use in order to reframe monetary value as a function neither of sovereignty nor of the natural qualities of precious metals. Instead, he rooted a nonchartalist monetary nominalism in a social convention that operated on a scale that confounded the agency of any existing political institution or community. I use Locke's monetary writings as an entrée into the larger history of the emergence of new conceptions of commercial sociality in the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. More specifically, I argue that conceptions of commercial sociality developed not only out of the better-studied normative concerns central to post-Hobbesian and neo-Augustinian political thought but also out of an intense engagement with the practical implications of early modern commercial capitalism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]