Redefining Money—Evolving Legal Frameworks in the Token Economy
The introductory roundtable, chaired by Professor Christos Gortsos, examined the evolving landscape of digital money, with a focus on Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs), stablecoins, and the legal frameworks governing them. Discussions addressed the scope and limitations of the EU’s MiCA regulation, the interplay between monetary law and crypto regulation, and the challenges of applying traditional legal concepts—such as lex monetae and legal tender—to new digital instruments.
The debate also examined private-sector initiatives, such as Germany’s Commercial Bank Money Tokens (CBMTs), as potential complements or competitors to CBDCs. Cross-border legal uncertainty, financial inclusion, monetary sovereignty, and the geopolitical implications of digital currency strategies were among the key themes. The roundtable concluded with a shared recognition that money is not static but a dynamic, contested technology shaped by legal, political, and technological change.
“Money is legal tender. It is still a socioeconomic technology that uses representations of value to communicate obligations or socioeconomic relationships, but the foundations and rules of that technology, basis, value, and form, are dictated by the state, which declares through the idea of legal tender that it has a monopoly on what money is and, by extension, how citizens communicate obligations and manage their socioeconomic relationships.”
— Franklin Noll
“The issue of CBDC will have the consequence of having a broader, really much broader scope of the lex monetae, and also new questions concerning the applicable law to data transfer or AMLFT.”
— Caroline Kleiner
“If money and sovereignty must be analysed in parallel when one talks about the public law and public legal aspects of money, the same holds for technology. And any technological innovation in public money needs to be linked to the analysis of sovereignty and the power of the state.”
— Rosa Maria Lastra
“The preferred features of a digital shekel are usability, protection against fraud, especially if free, and earning interest, while privacy was less important among the Israeli public.”
— Ruth Plato-Shinar
“Shouldn't we redefine money in a broader way and say everything which has functional monetary value is money, however, redefine not the money but legal tender in a more narrow way?”
— Rolf H. Weber
“My perspective here, summarising, is that we have at least the chance of complementarity instead of competition. So we have the private answer, for example, in a CBMT concept and the CBDC concept as the public money answer.”
— Sebastian Omlor
“The metaphysical question is, is the regulation of CBDC in this context a matter of crypto law, or is it a matter of monetary law? Because I'm thinking this is really the main question.”
— Dirk Zetzsche