La sostenibilità delle criptovalute come mezzo di pagamento

In the past year, the rise of cryptocurrencies, and Bitcoin in particular, had caused an increasingly attraction across the world towards the topic. Despite of that, the majority of them is mostly affiliated merely with decentralized payment systems. Interestingly enough, the potential hidden behind these sophisticated systems and networks has not been examined yet to the extent it deserves. Therefore, the purpose of this work is to discover what economic consequences this cutting edge technology may bring to our society in terms of the way our, not only, government organizations work, along with possible implications for economic policy and if cryptocurrencies could be used as a medium of payment in the future. In order to do so, we analyzed the exchange methods since ancient times and explained what the functions of money are in order to give an overall view to the reader. We tried to explain what the main functions of Blockchain and cryptocurrencies are without entering too much in technicalities and examined the main problems related to regulamentation and volatility of the market. Finally, we provided some examples of the actual use of cryptocurrencies in real life and then analyzed why most companies and retailer's do not accept cryptocurrencies as means of payment to then conclude with a personal opinion of what the future of cryptocurrencies will be.