Faculty Colloquium

Presenter: Régis Bismuth, Full professor at Sciences Po.

Discussant: Pieter-Augustijn Van Malleghem, associate professor at Sciences Po Law School.

The programmability of money, understood briefly as the capacity to embed conditions of execution into its use, remains largely hypothetical within the current architecture of digital currencies. It nevertheless opens up a field of inquiry of unprecedented scope. It compels a reconsideration of some of money’s classical attributes (fungibility, legal tender status, discharging power, among others). Beyond these questions of monetary law, it also raises broader issues concerning the protection of individual freedoms and the redrawing of the boundaries of economic and social governance, while outlining new democratic dilemmas.