Becoming the first continent to be climatically neutral is currently both Europe’s main challenge and greatest opportunity. A new energy model, based on energy that is renewable, distributed and efficient, is crucial in order to accelerate the solution to the climate emergency. In this sense, on 25 February 2015, the European Commission set out a vision of an Energy Union with citizens at its core, where citizens take ownership of the energy transition, benefit from new technologies to reduce their bills and participate actively in the market. In June 2019, the European Union turned this public policy objective into an applicable regulation while the new EU directive on the electricity market set a new actor on the energy market: the citizen energy community. In this article, we analyse the meaning and significance of this key player in transforming the economy into a climate-neutral economy.

The main aim of this article is to explain how a computer process, the «Blockchain» or chain of blocks, can generate the necessary trust for the creation, acceptance and increasingly widespread use of digital currencies, under a new concept or paradigm of money not maintained by any state or supranational entity: cryptocurrencies. In order to understand this process, the technical aspects of how the blockchain operates and how it has managed to generate confidence in the end user are explained first. Secondly, its implementation will be analyzed through the best known of all, Bitcoin, and through the data related to the expansion and use of the main cryptocurrencies in a market that in the last two years has multiplied by 65, reaching half a trillion dollars. This work closes by exposing the main conclusions and reflections.

In the current context, where the objective of the central banks is their fight against deflation and sustainable economic growth, the value of money—that is, the interest rate—and the value of a currency—the exchange rate—play an essential role in making decisions about monetary policy.

The use of new technologies has led to growth in the size and complexity of financial markets. This expansion and transformation of finance has led to the frequent emergence of new financial products which demand a society capable of adequately understanding how these markets operate, in order to be better informed when making saving, investment and borrowing decisions.

Despite the fact that the education of society in financial matters is still a distant concept, technology is advancing and radical changes are being made to how we conduct transactions and guarantee the fulfilment of contracts through a new protocol called «blockchain», which may represent a new trading platform in the financial markets and in society in general.

This article presents a reading on the implications of an extremely loose monetary policy considering two basic instruments: extremely low interest rates and synchronised devaluation of currencies in different economies. Some of the reasons that explain the rise of digital currencies and their security system are also analysed.

In recent years, technological solutions of varying degrees of complexity have emerged that have driven the evolution of logistics and supply chain, and which enable concordance between the requirements and limitations faced by customers in the eCommerce shopping process.

Advances in certain technologies in other sectors has enabled them to be incorporated into logistics and the supply chain, not only adding value for the customer through the customization of the products and services on offer, but also having an impact on suppliers and other actors that form part of the chain, enabling them to achieve enhanced responsiveness in terms of stock planning, management and transportation.

In the future, the adoption of these new technologies will require a process of specialization at the expense of the purely operational role that has characterized the logistics sector to date, as well as requiring new standards and regulatory bodies to be generated that enable their integration and development.