Technology has been transforming the world for some time, in a world abound with information and communication, and in which the process of digitization – here understood as the phenomenon that transforms atoms into bits – accelerates. Technology is leading us to a time when the very physical existence – or materiality – of money will cease to exist.

It was in 2008 that decades of research into cryptography and distributed networks resulted in the publication of the document Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System, by an unknown author under the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto. The first Bitcoin transaction took place on January 12, 2009. Cryptocurrencies and blockchain technologies were born.