Commodities and cryptoactives as emerging factors in Currency Wars

Abstract

The global economy is characterized by a rapid evolution in terms of available methods and assets, which is why it is necessary to carry out a periodic review of trends in various fields on the international stage. Specifically, countries adopt attack and defense mechanisms in commercial terms, identifying currency wars as a trending politicaleconomic category during the first three decades of the 21st century. Although currency wars have been recorded for several previous decades, globalization has included new aspects to be taken into account, making cryptoassets and commodities enter as factors that modify the practice. The objective of this research is to determine the role of cryptoassets and the trend towards commodities in the practice of currency wars, both in terms of their perpetrators and in the repercussions for countries that are not directly related. Although the economic powers are who apply currency wars, the consequences usually extend to the respective peripheries, triggering diverse economic reactions and with disparate implications among the actors. Although these implications have always been relevant, the incursion of cryptofinance makes economic relations become more complex, giving advantages to central countries due to their notable access to technology, but providing peripheral countries with a subterfuge to protect their economies of the collateral damage of a currency war, which is accentuated when the acquisition of financial contracts on commodities is incorporated as market variables. All these elements end up repositioning the actors of this political-economic phenomenon, causing its study to be renewed towards an era of economic digitalization even in international relations.