· 4 min read

What’s in a Name?

John Winchcombe
John Winchcombe · Editor
What’s in a Name?

A new paper by the European Money & Finance Forum (SUERF) examines the importance of words 1. It examines the words and language used to in current economic and policy discussions of these developments in digital money and payments because their use is causing confusion.

Smart contracts and programmability

Smart contracts are not ‘smart’, as they are merely computer codes that execute tasks upon the fulfilment of preconditions.

The smart contracts don’t ‘think for themselves’, neither are they contracts in the legal sense. The term ‘smart contract’ is being used to describe a concept which is analogous to that of ‘programmability’.

It is also worth noting that programmable means of payments/payments is not necessarily exclusive to the crypto-verse or crypto-verse technologies/innovations.

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