Owning & Moving Money (Fiat Rail Model)

When you have money in a bank account, you can:

• Decide where it goes: send it to another account, pay a bill, withdraw cash.

• Place some conditions indirectly: you can authorize recurring payments, set up standing orders, or sign contracts that instruct the bank to release money under certain terms.

But in all these cases, you’re depending on external systems and intermediaries:

• The bank enforces your instructions.

• Contracts are enforced by courts or trusted institutions.

• Conditional logic (like “pay supplier only if goods arrive”) has to be mediated by humans or third-party services.

So while your bank account gives you the feeling of control, the enforcement of rules depends on trust in third parties (the bank, courts, clearinghouses).

With smart contracts, the enforcement is trustless and automatic: the capital can’t be misused, delayed, or reinterpreted because the code is the law.

• Owning & Moving Money = You control the balance and instruct intermediaries. The governance layer is external.

• Governing Money = The money itself enforces its own terms. The governance layer is internal, coded into the contract.