Few books have done so much damage to human understanding in recent times as the book by Yuval Harari called Sapiens. The idea that phenomena as complex as money and religion can be boiled down to the explanation \u201cthey are just stories we tell ourselves in order to organize better,\u201d is as catchy as it is wrong. At this point I need to profusely apologize to all the people to whom I once recommended the book, for I too got caught in this author\u2019s story about stories dressed as science. You live and you learn I guess\u2026 or hope.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The idea that money has value because \u2018we share a belief that it has value\u2019 is simply too simplistic and quite simply, wrong. So, I\u2019m going to take bitcoin as an example of money and make everything behind money\u2026 even simpler.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Before we get to bitcoin, let\u2019s talk about the history of money. Or, at least, let\u2019s read what those who have studied the history of money have to say. Once you\u2019ve read that, and dug further into the subject like a good do-your-own-researcher, I will venture to summarize what the main thing was that I took out of studying it myself. Done? Good! Let\u2019s go.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
When I look at the history of money, all the way from beads, to shells, to gold, to fiat, to bitcoin, I, like many millions before me (except Yuval Harari), see some characteristics that these forms of money had in common.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Since millions have seen this long before I ever did, I\u2019m going to crib the work of those before me without contributing anything myself. The main characteristics of money, there might be more that I don\u2019t mention, are as follows:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Go through this incomplete list with each of the historic forms of value and you will see that they share these characteristics to a larger or lesser degree.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
How profoundly strange that all these forms of money that \u201conly have value because we tell ourselves they have value\u201d actually share certain characteristics independent of the stories we tell ourselves about them? Could it be that maybe money is not simply a lie we as humans tell ourselves in order to organize better but is rather something more concrete than that?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So, here is my overly simplistic way to look at bitcoin that will help you answer some of the questions that seem to trip up people still new to the concept of bitcoin: money is, simply, a technology or tool human beings use.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As examples of how this change of framework of looking at money changes the entire conversation, I\u2019ll answer to questions\/objections people seem to always ask\/state when trying to prove that bitcoin won\u2019t work:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Simple answers based on new simple framework:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So, there you go, money is not some story we tell ourselves. Rather it is a tool that we have used over millennia and it has certain characteristics that make it better or worse to use as a money.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Here is an example from Vijay Boyapati, from whom I\u2019ve cribbed most of my work today:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Not too bad for a technology that has been in existence for merely 11 years?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So, there you go, go out and do further damage to human understanding with that overly simplistic explanation of what money is. You have my approval.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Is this good for bitcoin? Yes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Few books have done so much damage to human understanding in recent times as the book by Yuval Harari called Sapiens. The idea that phenomena as complex as money and religion can be boiled down to the explanation \u201cthey are just stories we tell ourselves in order to organize better,\u201d is as catchy as it […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_coblocks_attr":"","_coblocks_dimensions":"","_coblocks_responsive_height":"","_coblocks_accordion_ie_support":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-34","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sevexity.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sevexity.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sevexity.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sevexity.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sevexity.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=34"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sevexity.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":35,"href":"https:\/\/sevexity.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34\/revisions\/35"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sevexity.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=34"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sevexity.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=34"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sevexity.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=34"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}