Many on the left continue to view cryptocurrency as little more than a grift. Yet the crypto industry aims to achieve something much more dangerous: functional monetary sovereignty. Their infrastructures create new conditions for exchange, wealth, and information. By ignoring these developments, we increasingly live in a dystopian world of monetary fiefdoms, and we find ourselves lacking the legal imagination to meet the moment.

Earlier this month, Sam Bankman-Fried was found guilty of seven counts of fraud and conspiracy. His conviction should not, however, be seen as any kind of victory. For the past three years, SBF successfully exploited a financial regulatory system stuck in older ways of thinking and increasingly incapable of averting illicit finance in the platform economy. To prevent such predation in the future, LPE scholars must help accelerate the turn to proactive planning, including via the day-to-day, direct supervision of major financial institutions.

Six money and banking experts offer their initial reactions to the Silicon Valley Bank debacle.

Raúl Carrillo interviews Darrick Hamilton about the Fed’s approach to unemployment, the racialized harms of shifting the burden of price stability onto workers, and the long struggle for fair and full employment.

Introducing a symposium on the hottest topic in macroeconomics.

I follow Patricia Williams, Angela Harris & Aysha Pamukcu, in arguing universal rights, to basic income and other resources, are insufficient but necessary ingredients for justice. Indeed, I argue for permanent, non-discretionary funding of these rights. No one truly knows how much money the U.S. government spends encoding and encasing private property rights, much less private capital’s rights to coordinate or contract. In many ways, these costs are “baked into” society. So, ultimately, should it be for rights to income, healthcare, housing, education, employment for all.