Overview
This series separates conditions that coordinate when or how ordinary money moves from restrictions that remain attached to the asset. It tests transferability and convertibility, applies the distinction to Project Agorá’s wholesale cross-border prototype and its reported real-value testing, then examines settlement finality, central-bank liability, user rights, authority, and failure allocation. Its conclusion is bounded: payment-level programmability can preserve ordinary money, while asset-level restrictions require stronger monetary and legal justification.
Learning outcomes
- Programmable payments place conditions on the transfer and can leave the recipient with ordinary money.
- Transferability asks whether a condition travels; convertibility asks whether it ends in unrestricted basic money.
- Project Agorá’s prototype demonstrates programmable wholesale workflow, but does not by itself establish programmable money.
- Asset-level restrictions can weaken no-questions-asked acceptance and raise greater legal, monetary, and governance burdens.
Keywords
Preview every chapter · Unlock full text, audio, and video from chapter 4
PlansFAQ
What is the difference between programmable payments and programmable money?
Programmable payments condition when or how ordinary money moves; programmable money carries restrictions in the asset itself after transfer.
How can you tell whether a digital payment is programmable money?
Identify the asset, locate the condition, then ask whether the object can travel and whether the condition converts it into basic money.
What does Project Agorá show about programmable payments?
Project Agorá’s prototype shows how tokenized reserves and deposits, shared workflow, and atomic settlement can coordinate wholesale cross-border payments; it does not by itself prove that the money is programmable.
Why is programmable money legally different from a programmable payment?
Programmable money can restrict use, holders, or expiry of the asset, raising questions about currency status, par convertibility, property, autonomy, authority, and remedies; payment-level conditions usually leave the currency unchanged but still require rules for providers, finality, and losses.