With the advent of cryptocurrency, the use of digital wallets has increased even further
The use of digital wallets flourished as technology evolved in the past decade. Governments all over the world encouraged people to switch from traditional wallets to digital wallets as they were convenient in many ways. Their popularity peaked during the pandemic because of their contactless benefits. Then, with the advent of cryptocurrency, the use of digital wallets increased even further. All this happened quite rapidly for most people to keep up with and resulted in some confusion about these two types of currencies.
People began using digital wallets to hold both digital currency as well as cryptocurrency. And often, we find them using the terms interchangeably. However, they differ.
1) Digital Currency Vs Digital Coins
Digital currency refers to the electronic form of fiat money issued by governments. They are used for contactless transactions between parties, like when you electronically transfer an amount from your bank account to someone else’s. When you pay from your bank account or digital wallet, which stores value corresponding to the actual fiat money via an electronic transfer mechanism for a product or service, you are using digital currency. When you withdraw money from an ATM, the digital currency is turned into liquid cash.
Cryptocurrencies, on the other hand, is a store of value secured by encryption. They are often referred to as digital coins. There are several digital coins such as Bitcoin, Ether and Dogecoin. All these crypto coins are privately owned or created and are not yet regulated in most countries. These are created using advanced blockchain technology.
2) Usage
Digital currency does not require encryption, but users need to secure their digital wallets (banking apps) with strong passwords to minimise the risk of theft or hacking. Users also need to secure their debit/credit cards with passwords. They can use any of these means to transact digital currency from their bank accounts.
Cryptocurrency is protected by strong encryption. To trade cryptocurrency, you need to first have a bank account and digital currency in it. You will have to exchange the digital currency via an online exchange to get cryptocurrency for the corresponding value.
3) Regulatory Authority
As digital currency is the electronic form of fiat money, it is always backed by a centralised authority. In India, the Reserve Bank regulates the rupee and all digital currency transactions are monitored by authorities. The cryptocurrency is based on a decentralised system and independent of any centralised regulation. But all transactions are recorded in a decentralised ledger that is available to everyone to see.
4) Stability
Digital currency is usually stable and it is relatively easy to manage its transactions because of wider acceptance in the global market. Cryptocurrency is highly volatile and just gaining traction. Not many companies have started accepting payments with cryptocurrencies.
5) Transparency
Details of digital currency transactions are only available to the sender, receiver and banking authorities. All cryptocurrency transaction details are in the public domain by virtue of a decentralised ledger.
1) Установите соответствие между заголовками 1 — 8 и текстами A — G. Используйте каждую цифру только один раз. В задании один заголовок лишний.
1. Essential money
2. Appropriate dress
3. Traveller identification
4. Quality maps
5. Skin protection
6. Handy devices
7. Boarding pass
8. Emergency numbers
A. Planning for a trip can be almost as exciting as going on it. You imagine how much you’re going to enjoy arriving at your destination, getting settled into your hotel and going out on that first night in a new town. Just make sure you bring the right clothes; even if you travel to a warm location, it might be chilly at night.
B. Airports can be dizzying experiences. There are signs and information everywhere, and loads of people running round, trying to do lots of things at once. In this chaos, it’s easy to misplace something, like the piece of paper or card that allows you on the plane. It’s best to keep it in your front pocket so you know where it is and it’s easy to hand it over to the attendant.
C. Travel preferences vary widely, but a large percentage of people choose fun and sun. There is lots to be done in preparation for such a trip, but as sun lotion is essential, you should remember to buy that at the very least. Buying it at home can save you 30 per cent on the price, and you should buy a new bottle every year, as the old stuff doesn’t protect as well.
D. We all prepare for the worst case scenario when we travel abroad, even though we don’t think about it all the time. Most of us have got mobile phones, which keep all our contacts stored for us. But what happens if you lose it? This is why you should also keep a handwritten list. It would be a shame if something terrible happened and you couldn’t reach your own home.
E. When you go on holiday, you should never carry a great deal of cash with you, but you need to have some on hand to pay for the odd things at the airport, like meals or last minute travel purchases. Most airports have cash machines, but it might be a good idea to have a small amount in your purse or wallet before you arrive.
F. Being in a new city means you’re not likely to know your way around. Walking the streets aimlessly is not ideal or even safe, so you need a paper or electronic guide that shows you where things are and how to get around the streets. It’s especially good if it shows where the hotels, museums and sights of interests are located, and how to find bus routes or metro stations, too.
G. Governments have put a lot of effort into travel documents to make sure they’re state-of-the-art. Nowadays, they come with microchips that contain all of the data in your passport in an electronic form. This is a way to prevent counterfeiting of these documents and to ensure that the holder of the documents is the true owner. It is yet another way to make our travel safer.
| A | B | C | D | E | F | G |
2) Прочитайте текст и заполните пропуски A — F частями предложений, обозначенными цифрами 1 — 7. Одна из частей в списке 1—7 лишняя.
Wales
Wales shares a great deal of its history with the rest of Great Britain, but it has its own distinctive identity that is closer to the Celtic regions of the British Isles, such as Ireland, Scotland and Cornwall, and also to Brittany in northern France. These regions make up the Celtic nations, ___ (A).
Wales, like Scotland and England, is considered to be a country within the country of the United Kingdom. This is because the region is distinctly different from other regions in aspects like history and culture, ___ (B).
Although Wales is represented in the United Kingdoms House of Commons, the lower house of the UK’s parliament, it is also partly self-governed. Some Welsh people wish for independence, ___ (C). Polls show that around 80-90% of Welsh people do not favour separation from the UK.
Nearly everyone in Wales speaks English, but Wales is officially a bilingual country, the other official language being Welsh. Wales is known as Cymru in the Welsh language, pronounced ‘kum-ree, and the Welsh people are known as Cymry, ___ (D).
Indeed, the influence of the rest of the UK on Wales has been strong and the use of English so widespread that the Welsh language was feared to be dying out. A law passed in 1993 officially placed the Welsh language on a par with English in the country. Court proceedings can be carried out in Welsh or English, ___ (E).
Furthermore, there are different dialects and forms of pronunciation of Welsh within the country. Differences are noted between the northern and southern regions, and a combination of English and Welsh, commonly known as ‘Wenglish’, has emerged ___ (F).
1. which is pronounced in the same way as the country’s name
2. which mixes words, grammar and pronunciation from the two languages
3. of which Wales is an integral and influential part
4. and road signs and public documents are printed in both languages
5. although it doesn’t have embassies and is subject to most UK laws
6. of which a large number of Welsh people approve
7. although support for it is not particularly strong
| A | B | C | D | E | F |
3) Прочитайте текст и запишите в поле ответа цифру 1, 2, 3 или 4, соответствующую выбранному Вами варианту ответа.
Показать текст. ⇓
Becky was locked out of her online account because…
1) she’d completely forgotten her password.
2) her computer suffered a glitch.
3) she had problems typing her password correctly.
4) she owed money to her bank.
4) Прочитайте текст и запишите в поле ответа цифру 1, 2, 3 или 4, соответствующую выбранному Вами варианту ответа.
Показать текст. ⇓
The reason Becky contacted her bank was to…
1) complain about their service.
2) find out how to access her account.
3) ask questions about their policy.
4) learn what her old password was.
5) Прочитайте текст и запишите в поле ответа цифру 1, 2, 3 или 4, соответствующую выбранному Вами варианту ответа.
Показать текст. ⇓
The bill Becky wanted to pay…
1) was already late.
2) didn’t need to be paid for a few days.
3) was too expensive to pay.
4) would cost more if not paid that day.
6) Прочитайте текст и запишите в поле ответа цифру 1, 2, 3 или 4, соответствующую выбранному Вами варианту ответа.
Показать текст. ⇓
What happened when Becky called the bank for help?
1) They refused, on account of her anger.
2) They asked her for information she couldn’t provide.
3) They never responded to her after she’d been on hold for a long time.
4) They told her to phone another department.
7) Прочитайте текст и запишите в поле ответа цифру 1, 2, 3 или 4, соответствующую выбранному Вами варианту ответа.
Показать текст. ⇓
‘It’ in ‘Completely focused on the unfairness of it’ in the fourth paragraph refers to…
1) Becky’s clumsiness.
2) the difficulty of trying to do a simple transaction.
3) how banks treated their customers.
4) the lack of security for online accounts.
Прочитайте текст и запишите в поле ответа цифру 1, 2, 3 или 4, соответствующую выбранному Вами варианту ответа.
Показать текст. ⇓
What kind of passwords would Becky prefer to use?
1) Ones that were connected to her life somehow.
2) The most secure, theft-free password she could think of.
3) The simplest password she could possibly think of.
4) Ones that she could easily change on a regular basis.
9) Прочитайте текст и запишите в поле ответа цифру 1, 2, 3 или 4, соответствующую выбранному Вами варианту ответа.
Показать текст. ⇓
The expression ‘added fuel to the fire’ in the last paragraph means…
1) deliberately made someone feel angry.
2) did something that made something worse.
3) did something to help a situation.
4) made someone feel better about their mistake.
Authored by Jeff Deist via The Mises Institute,
“Governments create money all the time. We do that for war.”
This is the argument for more money printing, and perhaps unlimited money printing, recently advanced by Professor Mariana Mazzucato on prime-time BBC.
— BBC Newsnight (@BBCNewsnight) March 6, 2023
Channeling Warren Mosler, the godfather of modern monetary theory, Dr. Mazzucato argues against “austerity”—by which she means any natural restraints on government spending. In order to spend, sovereign states need not “earn” tax revenue like a household must earn money, nor do they need to borrow. There is a third option: they can print new money at will and enjoy the profit of seigniorage. Just look at Germany, she says approvingly, which recently conjured up €100 billion by executive edict for the war effort in Ukraine!
She certainly is correct that governments print money to pay for wars. America was effectively born into debt during the Revolutionary War, and borrowed/printed money for every war thereafter.
But beyond that she is entirely and embarrassingly wrong. The fundamental reality is that more money does not create any new goods or services in the economy. Money is not wealth. Wealth is productive capacity; the ability to create actual goods and services. Germany and the European Central Bank can create euro stretching to the moon, but that will not produce a single missile or aircraft for the Ukrainians.
Actual production requires the allocation of real resources and real capital. Resource allocation requires choices, whether made by political edict or in the marketplace. In both cases there are inherent opportunity costs to not allocating those resources and capital to other uses. Politics doesn’t magically eliminate tradeoffs. Resources are scarce even when money is not.
A case in point, courtesy of economist Peter Schmidt: “During WWII, the Germans fielded an airplane that made every other aircraft obsolete—the ME262. Even though the German government faced no limits on how much currency it could create, it couldn’t conjure into existence the fuel the planes needed.” In fact, the Germans used oxen to put this most advanced fighter in takeoff position to save fuel!
One gets the sense that all of modern economics is dedicated to refuting Say’s law. The melding of economics and politics promises the proverbial free lunch, where demand creates its own production. Mazzucato is a worthy exemplar of this thinking.
An economist at University College London, Mazzucato wrote an oxymoronically titled book, The Entrepreneurial State. Not surprisingly, she urges greater “investment” by governments to innovate where the private sector supposedly cannot or will not. She is also a graduate of the New School for Social Research, an institution which truly lives up to its radical progressive history. Only of its early leading lights, the noxious reformer John Dewey, was a particular bête noire in Murray Rothbard’s critique of postmillennial pietism. Of course, neither Mazzucato’s background nor her political views alone negate her arguments. But it is worth noting how the Left consistently elevates its radicals and how mainstream outlets like BBC are entirely comfortable featuring them. This only works one way. We cannot imagine a scenario where BBC interviews Per Bylund on the topic of entirely eliminating central banks in favor of private money. Yet Mazzucato’s MMT prescription for almost unlimited political provision of money is at least as radical relative to the status quo in monetary and fiscal policy.
But money creation is not magic. It certainly does not create any new wealth, and in fact destroys wealth by directing resources toward inherently inefficient (nonmarket) uses.
It benefits early recipients and the political class at the cost of higher prices and terrible distortions in the invaluable structure of production which makes the West so wealthy.
Progressives of all political stripes would happily put America and the West on a permanent wartime footing. Mazzucato and her contemporaries are political people, and politics is war by other means. Inequality, climate change, racism, transphobia, pandemics, and a host of other issues—none of which ever should have been politicized—are now tantamount to battlefields. War costs money, and magic economics wants us to believe national treasuries and central banks can foot any bill.
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