The Digitalisation of Money and its Challenge to Central Banking: The Case of the Bank of England
The digitalisation of money has sparked contrasting perspectives on its implications for central banking and monetary governance. While some scholars argue it empowers private actors, others suggest it enhances public monetary capacities. This research project aims to examine the impact of digital monetary innovations, such as bitcoin and the use of blockchain technology, on monetary governance through a single-case study of the Bank of England. While acknowledging that digitalisation has the potential to strengthen monetary control, this project challenges the tendency to frame the interests of governing agents and private actors in strictly oppositional terms. This perspective, it argues, overlooks the opportunities private digital innovations may offer central banks and fails to explain why certain private innovations are resisted while others are embraced. Employing a qualitative and historicist methodology, this study situates recent innovations, such as cryptocurrencies and CBDCs, within the longer historical trajectory of monetary digitalisation, which dates back to the late 1980s. By triangulating policy analysis, secondary sources, archival research, and semi-structured interviews, it investigates how the Bank of England strategically leverages private market innovations to enhance its monetary capacities. Challenging conventional narratives that view these transformations as purely technical or apolitical phenomena, my research will help rethink the role of public authorities in the construction of monetary digitalisation.