chapter 02FROM PAPER TO DIGITAL Gold, silver, copper, bronze, stones, seashells, tobacco, skins, coins, paper and now bits and bytes. All this has been or is money, that is, an intrinsic value implying a The Outlook is Getting Clearer… promise for reimbursement or exchange. The last 10 years have represented a pro- 1 found transformation in many of our habits and how most industries operate. Money FinTech Law is no exception. Technological advances, creativity of entrepreneurs and reductions of transaction costs, have undoubtedly been some of the key elements of this revolution in which technology and finance are mixed. The most intimate quality of money is its intangibility, its symbolic value. In ancient times it has been a seashell, nowadays an electronic record. You can not touch a dollar, a peso or any other currency like you can not touch one hour or one cubic centimeter. Money is a consensual accounting unit that measures debts or the value of what one has, but more importantly, measures confidence. About 2,300 years before the Christian era, Babylon witnessed the first letter of credit. Millennia later, technology enables new possibilities, but deep down, all unit of change is based on the exchange between two human beings that trust each other: we owe and we pay, I give you this in exchange for so many pesos. 1 In collaboration with Vicente Fenoll, Kubo Finan- Debt is money and money is debt… along the way there are many forms of transac- ciero; Francisco Mere, OOKBAL Capital; and FinTech tion and these move through established channels that we call “Banking” or through Team, White & Case Mexico. A TWO-WAY PATH 21