The 2020 financial numbers produce contradictions from all angles. The world went through a dramatic crisis in health and economic terms. At the same time that aggregate demand levels plummeted in powers like the United States, their shares reached new records on the New York stock exchanges.

Nasdaq companies accumulated average profits of 44 percent in twelve months. This index is dominated by technology companies, such as Amazon, which benefited from changes in the population's consumption pattern during the pandemic.

But also the companies of the S&P 500 ended 2020 with a new record by accumulating an average increase of 16 percent and those of the Dow Jones of 7 percent. Traditional industries finished the financial year better than they started it despite the economic slump.

This list of assets with significant returns goes beyond stocks. The price of raw materials such as soybeans rose 40 percent and gold 25 percent. While these investments were good bets, the year left an undisputed winner: bitcoin.

The cryptocurrency surpassed a peak of $ 29,000 on the last day of the year, and today it touched $ 33,000. At the beginning of 2020 it was bought for 7 thousand and it came to be worth less than 5 thousand in the first semester. Put another way: the price of the digital currency has quadrupled in the last twelve months.

These extraordinary rises rekindled the debates about cryptocurrencies. Discussions are primarily focused on whether there is a bubble, whether bitcoin can replace gold as a global store of value, and whether its technology is environmentally sustainable.

But the most attractive debate of the next few years will possibly go in another direction: the dispute between private digital currencies versus state digital currencies. This is a discussion that is not exclusive to economists, computer engineers, and investors.

History theory plays an important role in the role that cryptocurrencies may or may not take over the next few decades. At the moment, the less optimistic analysts mention that it seems unlikely that a country will allow the massive circulation of private currencies with rules independent from those of the government.

The clearest proof is the prominence that state developments began to have to launch their own digital currencies. China is at the forefront of these advances and is possibly the first economy in the world to massively digitize its money.

The technology of the digital yuan will not be exactly the same as that of cryptocurrencies because it will not use blockchain but it will take advantage of the best of cryptography and the use of loose coupling accounts to allow payments without an internet connection. The idea is to replicate the use of the ticket.

In one of the latest reports from the International Institute of Finance, an interesting review is made of the possible advantages of the digital yuan and ensures that "all countries are waiting for its launch to see how it works and what to learn."

From developed countries like Japan to emerging economies like Turkey, they intend to move in this same direction.

This does not necessarily imply that private digital currencies are destined for failure. The international financial architecture is in a moment of transition and the lesson of history is that what now seems unlikely can quickly become so.

Optimistic analysts use this argument to argue that private digital currencies - from the decentralized bitcoin project to centralized projects like Facebook's Libra (Diem) - have room to thrive.

Behind this idea there is a hypothesis about the trend with which societies move. It is considered that the world continues to be politically fragmented, but states have less and less independence. They are tied to the mandate of global markets, large global firms and non-governmental institutions.

Put another way: States lose their place against a global elite that defines the roadmap of societies, and holds them together with a common culture and interests. With this reading, it is not illogical to think in the future about the need to massify a private digital currency.