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look closely what do we all have in common no matter what corner of the world you live in you need food Water Shelter and money half of every transaction involves money in exchange for goods or services stocks a loaf of bread illegal drugs you got to pay for for it we spend much of our Lives chasing money to make a living and accomplish our dreams but it's also an instrument of Destruction some might say evil driving criminals to lie steal and even murder the existing banking system extracts enormous value from society and it is parasitic in nature money is a catalyst for the worst and the best of human endeavor before civilization we created current fuel for Wars the path to power champion and enemy of innovation money is so integral to our society and our global economy that its true nature remains a mystery to most this is the story of money perhaps the end of money as we know it no matter how fat your bank account or how thin your wallet to us it's all Cold Hard Cash there are some who want to kill it get rid of it burn your dollars your Euros your Yen and transform every penny you have into ones and zeros digital currency entrust it to the web and computers spread across the planet magic internet money it's called cryptocurrency Bitcoin invented in secret it was a gift to the world it's not just a currency but it's actually programmable money a potential curve on bankers and there's nothing that the the big Banks or politicians can do to stop it breaking every government's grip on money supply what the internet did for information Bitcoin is doing for money could it be the new gold M no you have to really stretch your uh imagination to infer what the intrinsic value of Bitcoin is Regulators the Federal Reserve the banking system at least understand this is a thing that they have to take seriously this is going to change the economic culture Bitcoin could be a microeconomic miracle worker and it could be a macroeconomic wrecking Bard is Bitcoin the currency of the future a godsend for criminals or a recipe for financial disaster if you trust your money just as it is we have a little story to share once upon a time there was a big party with everyone standing around the punch B drunk politicians credited the strong economy to their wise decisions businesses jumped into new profitable markets ignoring risk in fact the experts said there was no risk then troubling Market data from minor countries spooked the markets rumors spread more bad news rattled housing prices at the heart of the financial World a major bank went insolvent investors and businesses made a run on the other Banks demanding their cash deposits the largest financial institutions in the center of the modern world were frozen assets were seized Banks foreclosed a credit crunch threatened the entire world economy and then finally the government stepped in the largest bank bailout ever Swift action by the head of state had saved the day remember that no you don't it happened 2,000 years ago Rome 33 ad ground zero for the first recorded liquidity crisis and government bailout in history the largest Empire the world had ever seen was brought to its knees by a banking disaster Emperor Tiberius used money from the national treasury to bail out the country's troubled Banks and companies history may not repeat itself but it certainly Rhymes badly people in power and their money have always been at the very center of it the story of money is as old as civilization itself when we lived in small tribes keeping track of debt was easy you owed somebody a load of firewood a neighbor owed you a piece of meat credits and debits were kept in your head a mental Ledger currency is a language that allows us to Express transactional value between people it's technology that's older than uh the wheel it's as old as fire when humans wanted to trade outside their tribe or Village they needed something everyone could agree had value something scalable enter commodity monies there were many kinds but each had to embody the same five characteristics a commodity money is relatively scarce easily recognizable can be cut into smaller pieces you can substitute one piece for another of equal value and you can carry it around without too much trouble in ancient Rome it was salt the Aztecs used caca beans it was whale teeth on Fiji Yak dung in Tibet shells in Africa and China grains metal Ivory rare stones leather fish if it had the five characteristics of commodity money someone probably used it as currency and then you ask what value do these currencies have if you go into a primary school you'll see children exchanging rubber bands and tagoi and Pokemon cards and baseball cards and sweets and candy and any other form of currency people invent currency when they have no other currency and now they're going to invent digital currencies but Commodities that aren't durable are allowed store of value a bad cacao crop or a huge new salt Discovery can throw your currency and economy into turmoil a more stable system was needed about 2500 years ago the first metal coins were minted in China and in what is now turkey these coins share the same five characteristics with commodity money but were also very durable in some cases coins are the only thing left of entire civilizations money does not originate with governments money arises naturally as markets are begin to develop and as people with the division of labor realized that if I have eggs and you have a cow we may need some medium of Exchange in order for you to buy my eggs or for me to buy your cow coins were an objective and Universal unit of account and they allowed people to buy and sell Goods over vast regions the market economy was born coins worked but only if people trusted that the king or Emperor who issued them wasn't cheating on the metal content using coins also meant that an authority now controlled the supply of your currency money and political power were inextricably linked centralized minting coins in a steady and predict able manner allowed economic growth and stability the woou coin in China retained its value for 500 years in Constantinople the solidus lasted for 700 years but in those times coins didn't have the the mil this sort of mil Edge they were flat and what used to happen was as coins were passing from people people people would cut little bits off and in fact in some of the taxation that the Kings would do would actually be take 1/8 of the coin off taxes built castles and financed military campaigns expensive Hobbies soon Royal mints were substituting cheaper medals for silver and gold this is called debasement and Europe's Kings made a habit of it the currency of France was debased every 20 months for 200 years if no one can trust the gold or silver content of your coin coins how can you trade with other countries International Merchants found a solution they recognize that one person's debt has value it can be traded or transferred when those IUS came from reputable sources they could be used as a form of money paper money this money was not based on hard Commodities or metal but instead on someone's promise to pay Merchant families like the mediche in 15th century Florence acted as Clearing Houses for these IUS it worked like this an English Trader ordered a shipment of Italian cloth from the mediche for 100 gold coins his promise to pay the mediche was put on paper meanwhile the mediche owed 100 gold coins to another trading partner for delivery of wine from France the parties didn't go to the expense of transporting and exchanging gold coins instead the paper was trans transferred everyone agreed that the paper had value 100 gold coins but only because everyone trusted the medy as solvent middlemen they had created a paper money machine within a few Generations they Rose from low crime to High Finance their great wealth helped fuel the Italian Renaissance and elevated the family to levels of enormous political power the power to marry into royal families and get elected as popes the ties binding money to power politics and influence now ran through church and state Merchants had proven that creating paper currency could be wildly profitable gold Smiths wanted in on the action imagine it like this if the gold smith had seen over a period of time that some of the coins he was storing for people were gathering dust the people who own them don't need them right now so what if I go and them out into the community and I charge them interest on this loan so he starts out lending some of these gold coins and then later he realizes actually people don't even want the gold coins they just want the piece of paper that says the the gold coins are in the bank and with the Goldsmith so I can now make a loan with these pieces of paper and whatever I write on a piece of paper as long as people trust me they'll trust the paper and effectively the the goldsmiths and the early day Bankers they had literally acquired the power to print money more and more private paper money from merchants and Banks circulated and began to rival the Crown's coins the power inherent in controlling and issuing money began slipping away from the rulers they couldn't tax or debase this new kind of money but they had bigger Ambitions than ever with trading posts colonies and Empires that now stretched across the globe for centuries European countries would take turns building massive fleets and Waging War on each other to rule the world government wanted to take the people's money in order to finance its Wars that's essentially the history of money money and warfare go together war is expensive one year's income taxes simply are AR enough kings and queens had to borrow money against future taxes they needed a groundbreaking Financial Innovation government bonds the loans came from Rich Merchant families and goldsmiths who by now had become powerful financiers and bankers sovereign debt and deficit spending had been born
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