Sad to hear about the passing of Perry Mehrling. His simple paper "The Inherent Hierarchy of Money" was foundational to my understanding of how money and banking actually work, and how to think about the potential impact of Bitcoin, stablecoins, CBDCs, and DeFi. Tomorrow's lecture on Payment Systems will have several concepts pulled right out of his thinking.

In my experience, much of the skepticism from various corners of academia or policy about crypto stems from a lack of education on how money and banking actually work. The one silver lining from his untimely death is to bring more attention to his ideas.