What Is Money?

July 28, 2020
We know very little about money
We use what we think is money, every day
Someone made a keen observation about money
He pointed out that 50% of every transaction involves money, but what is money?
I have written about it and the essay is so long that there seem to be 80 videos about money and so I will attempt to make videos to say what I think and I am hoping that it will begin some intellectual discussions between you and your associates so that all of you benefit from my writing
The topic is so broad that I'm going to name each video by the coverage of that particular video, but they are all part of one series, 'What Is Money?'
The arrival of bitcoin started us all thinking about what money actually is and we were surprised and disappointed by our cursory investigation, but there is a lot more, I have found and I'll be discussing it in the next 80 videos or so
In our brief investigation, we discover that we've been had
Central banks have played us, like a banjo, swindled us for many decades and we are just becoming aware of their deceptions
Not federal, not a reserve, passed by outright fraud and deceit and the USD is a debt instrument, it's not even money
Those are just a few examples, for starters
What exactly is money?
Is money pieces of paper?
Is money a gold bar with a thick tungsten core?
Is money a gold-plated coin?
Is money a paper promise of gold that never becomes reality, 'paper gold'?
Those who tell you that money has to be heavy or shiny or pretty lack an understanding of what money is and the true purpose of money
They might also be ignorant of what has been used as money over many centuries to disprove our notions about money
We don't consider trinkets money, yet a lot of real estate was purchased with trinkets, Manhattan, for example
The biggest lie I have run across is that gold was used as money 6,000 years ago
I found this myth to be completely untrue and those who are telling the tale are salesmen
Oh! Salesmen always tell the truth, don't they?
Now the facts about that gold found in 4200 BC
There was a small treasure trove found in Varna, today, Bulgaria, and there is no evidence that people were buying bread or horses with gold coins
So little gold was found that it's not possible that it was used as money and, more importantly, virtually no one at the time knew what gold was
Remember, this is the first gold hoard, not the 215th treasure of gold found
Who knew about this metal?
Did they read about gold in a newspaper reporting on a gold find and everyone is rushing to get rich? It didn't happen
This was 6,000 years ago
Life was quite different
For every 1,000 people we have today, they had just one
The love of gold took many centuries of cultivation
It took time for people to become enamoured with gold, as they are today
This interest in the yellow metal has been slowly developed over many centuries, so don't believe gold dealers who argue that gold was money some 6,000 years ago and therefore you should buy some gold from the gold peddler
That is not a good reason to buy gold, even if it makes you feel really wonderful inside to carry around heavy pieces of metal in your pocket to show others that you own gold
In the marketing of any product, you are going to find lies laced into the sales pitch, exaggerations, hyperbole and outright fraud
The form of artifact money I found that lasted the longest was tally sticks
King John didn't use gold, because the price was too high, it was being hoarded by those who deal in gold and he just cut a branch from a tree and notched to indicate the value
Then he cut it down the middle and each party received half
When the holder of this money came to make a payment to the king, this stick was used
That stick may have been used to pay someone else, also
The king would honor the tally stick, regardless of who turned it in and there was no inflation of the money supply
Later, pieces of paper would be used by those who held gold belonging to others
The gold depository issued a receipt, which was sometimes traded and this is what started our banking system
So, let's review and then I'll make my point
We had money in the form of tree branches and that lasted a long, long time, some 800 years
We had pieces of paper which were receipts for gold stored that were used as money
Now I want to make an important point; Can money be in digital form?
I say we were already there, before bitcoin came about and I'll explain
Paychecks are direct deposited That's digital
Bills are paid with digital money
Your bank has a digital account of your money and you send a payment to the electric company, the water company, the phone service provider, your internet provider and all these payments were already digital
We don't have to look suspiciously at bitcoin, because digital money is already upon us with the fiat