CHALLENGES IN LEGAL DEFINITION OF MONEY IN THE CONTEMPORARY SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC DISCOURSE

Abstract

The subject of the analysis in the paper is the identification and review of the challenges that exist in the
science of modern monetary law in terms of the consistency and sustainability of the existing doctrines
postulates about money as a legal category. In this context, the paper analytically and axiologically analyzes
the concept of the so-called social and state theory of money that were of great importance in shaping
classical monetary legislation and the establishment and popularization of an early monetary legal thought,
while the second part of the paper points to the main principles of the so-called institutional theory of money,
which considers money as a normative text sui generis, and at the same time strongly supporting the
understanding of the central bank functional independence, which appears not just as the main monetary
legislator but also as the addressee of the disposition contained in the monetary legal norms. In the
circumstances of globalized financial and economic flows, as well as the intensive technological revolution,
the existing understandings in the legal definition of money require certain relativization, taking into account
first of all the emergence of digital money (both private and public) as well as the impact of monetary
innovations on the preservation of monetary stability as public good which, according to the opinion of the
author, imposes the real and logical need to redefine established understandings of the legal concept of
money in a way that preserves the stability of the monetary system, central bank credibility and the citizens
rights to a safe and solid currency, on the one hand, but also respects the needs of citizens to satisfy their
preferences on the market through digital money, which is not included in the existing theories because it
de facto represents a form of money (we mean the digital money of the central bank), and not a digital
expression of the existing traditional money