Money is all that is accepted as a means of payment. This is the first textbook definition that is taught in a normal university course of monetary economics. Money is therefore a social convention, which individuals accept and use, from a piece of metal to a printed paper ticket. For this reason, cryptocurrencies are in effect currency, as long as they are accepted as a means of payment by a community. A different question is the legality of money. In the modern economy, only coins with legal tender course can be used for transactions. Those not required by law, retain their role as currency but cannot be used in trade.
With the advent of blockchain technology, which has enabled the creation of a considerable number of digital currencies and that of social networks, which offer the possibility of creating a market of exchanges of unprecedented size, the world of currency and financial regulation is strongly questioned. The case of Libra, the digital currency that Facebook would like to launch as a transaction tool for its social network is the most striking example. The current technology allows you to use Libra and the demand for this type of currency exists and is huge. The constraint is only of a regulatory nature, since the main financial watchdogs have already put their hands on the risks associated with the use of this cryptocurrency, especially on the privacy side. The central bankers themselves have opposed the idea, denouncing its monopolistic character, pretending to forget that every central bank has a monopoly on the issue of money, imposed by the state, not by citizens.
Policy-makers may be delaying the use of cryptocurrencies, but the day will come when user demand will be too high for them to continue to be banned. Even the major financial institutions have understood this, so much so that the investment bank JPMorgan has already stated that it wants to launch its cryptocurrency in the short term. Jamie Dimon, its CEO is famously a libertarian, with an extremely capitalist and private market-oriented vision. Another forty major lenders are thinking of doing the same thing. The very fact that Bitcoin has remained standing since the terrible 2018, in which many now regarded it as a depleted bubble, shows that cryptocurrencies are much more anotable to the globalized digital market than many believed. For this reason, the assumption of a medium-term future in which the currency market will be entrusted to private entities, rather than central banks, is not utopia. The consequence of this is that the Forex market may be more populated with private currency than by fiat currencies.