the crisis, especially in housing - related industries, may have exacerbated for a time the extent of mismatch between the jobs available and the skills and locations of the unemployed. meanwhile, the very high level of long - term unemployment has probably led to some loss of skills and labor force attachment among those workers. these factors may have pushed up to some degree the so - called natural rate of unemployment – the rate of unemployment that can be sustained under normal conditions – and reduced labor force participation as well. the pace of productivity gains – another key determinant of growth in potential output – may also have been restrained by the crisis, as business investment declined sharply during the recession ; and increases in risk aversion and uncertainty, together with tight credit conditions, may have impeded the commercial application of new technologies and slowed the pace of business formation. importantly, however, although the nation ’ s potential output may have grown more slowly than expected in recent years, this slowing seems at best a partial explanation of the disappointing pace of the economic recovery. in particular, even though the natural rate of unemployment may have increased somewhat, a variety of evidence suggests that any such increase has been modest, and that substantial slack remains in the labor market. for example, the slow pace of employment growth has been widespread across industries and see carmen m. reinhart and kenneth s. rogoff ( 2009 ), this time is different : eight centuries of financial folly ( princeton : princeton university press ) ; moritz schularick and alan m. taylor ( 2012 ), “ credit booms gone bust : monetary policy, leverage cycles, and financial crises, 1870 – 2008, ” american economic review, vol. 102 ( april ), pp. 1029 – 61 ; valerie cerra and sweta chaman saxena ( 2008 ), “ growth dynamics : the myth of economic recovery, ” american economic review, vol. 98 ( march ), pp. 439 – 57 ; greg howard, robert martin, and beth anne wilson ( 2011 ), “ are recoveries from banking and financial crises really so different? ” international finance discussion papers 1037 ( washington : board of governors of the federal reserve system, november ) ; and michael d. bordo and joseph g. haubrich ( 2012 ), “ deep recessions, fast recoveries, and financial crises : evidence from the american record, ” working paper 12 – 14 ( cleveland : federal reserve bank of cleveland, june ). that

deposits at commercial banks — is widely used because consumers and businesses trust that the money they deposit with a commercial bank can be converted, on demand, into a claim on another commercial bank ’ s money or currency. this confidence owes in large part to bank deposit insurance and the fact that commercial banks are supervised and regulated. nonbank private money based on the u. s. dollar as the unit of account exists on a smaller scale for a variety of consumer uses, particularly in closed - loop payment systems like prepaid cards and digital wallets. in some cases, such nonbank private assets may have value only within the network, while in other cases, the issuer may promise convertibility to a sovereign currency, such that this becomes a liability of the issuing entity. although various federal and state laws establish protections for users, issuers of nonbank money are not regulated to the same extent as banks, the value stored in these systems is not insured directly by the fdic, and consumers may be at risk that the issuer will not be able to honor its liabilities. to provide a sense of the scale, paypal holdings inc. had customer accounts that totaled $ 22. 5 billion as of september 30, 2019 ; walmart had roughly $ 1. 9 billion in deferred gift card revenue as of october 31, 2019 ; and starbucks reported $ 1. 6 billion in stored - value card liabilities as of september 2018 — more than the deposits at many banks. 11 in contrast, cryptocurrencies introduce separate units of account. built using distributed ledger technologies, cryptocurrencies typically allow for peer - to - peer payments without the need for a financial intermediary. the private sector is exploring uses of distributed ledger technologies to create a wide range of payment instruments, some that are designed to resemble traditional commercial bank money, some that look similar to bitcoin, and some that have paypal, form 10 - q, september 30, 2019, retrieved from https : / / sec. report / document / 0001633917 - 19 - 000210 / ; walmart, form 10 - q, october 31, 2019, retrieved from http : / / d18rn0p25nwr6d. cloudfront. net / cik0000104169 / fcd4b7f8 - 578b - 430b - 90a3 - 9be0e6b51dec. pdf ; starbucks,