This week Bratislava again had the honour of hosting and witnessing some of the world’s leading experts at the conference entitled The Future of Money 2.0 organised by the F. A. Hayek Foundation in Hotel Falkensteiner on Thursday, 26th September. The main topic was the difficult and volatile situation of the current monetary system. The experts from various fields of the economic and financial sector discussed in depth the structural problems associated with the current system and the potential developments that we may face going forward. The conference was successful in attracting around 120 guests eager to get informed and prepared for the outcomes that we may face in the near future.

The main guest of the conference was James Rickards who addressed the issues of the four potential scenarios of how the world’s monetary system might develop. In his opinion, the future development may lead to a) a situation with multiple reserve currencies; b) resorting to Special Drawing Rights (SDR) as the new reserve currency; c) the return of the gold standard or; d) the collapse of the world monetary system. Steen Jakobsen talked about the optimism, from the position of the investor, about the substantial economic changes that we will face due to the economic reforms in the future. Ronald Ižip did not share this optimism as he predicted that the central banks would resort to even greater intervention in the monetary system. Peter Bálint discussed an ideal portfolio that every investor should possess to protect him/herself against a market crash and the subsequent investment into the undervalued assets associated with the basic consumption – agriculture, tobacco, alcohol and health care. Philipp Bagus gave a lecture on the history of fiat money and inevitability of the inflation which will end each such currency. Johnny Melgren, on the other hand, discussed the position of gold as money throughout history and used as an example Sweden, which manipulated and depreciated its gold in order to finance military campaigns. Finally, Peter Šurda informed the audience about the main economic characteristics of Bitcoins as the new prospective online currency.

We would like to thank all the participants, speakers and sponsors of the event such as Friedrich Naumann Stiftung and Saxo Bank. We are looking forward to the next volume of the conference in 2015. If you are interested in the lectures, they will be accessible on this website.