From clay tablets to crypto: Rethinking money in the age of blockchain

If wealth isn’t coins, bills oregon adjacent cryptocurrencies, what is it, really? That’s the question astatine the bosom of this week’s occurrence of The Clear Crypto Podcast, wherever hosts Nathan Jeffay (StarkWare) and Adrian Blust (Tonal Media) beryllium down with Bill Maurer, dean of the UC Irvine School of Social Sciences and a starring anthropologist of finance.

Back to the beginning

“I mostly statesman by going backmost to past and talking astir lawsuit studies similar past Mesopotamia,” Maurer said. 

He explained that starring into a speech astir blockchain oregon crypto, helium points to the emergence of society, and truthful the eventual emergence of a currency system. However, astatine the beginning, it wasn’t a token, coin oregon banknote; it wasn’t adjacent thing that was “passed manus to hand.”

He explains:

“What they had was an elaborate strategy for keeping records.” 

For Maurer, that’s the cardinal to knowing some past economies and today’s integer currencies: “money is fundamentally a mode of memorializing credits and debts, and that’s each that it’s ever been.”

Related: Bitcoin’s shrinking proviso whitethorn trigger terms breakout: Sygnum

Bitcoin’s role

While Bitcoin is often treated arsenic a caller signifier of integer currency oregon adjacent hailed arsenic the caller “digital gold,” Maurer challenges that view: 

“Even though the Bitcoin strategy recognizes that wealth is simply a grounds keeping operation, it's inactive stuck successful the thought that it is wealth successful the signifier of thing similar a coin.”

Maurer sees this arsenic a missed opportunity. “It tin beryllium a full antithetic acceptable of relationships astir information and worth without having to abstract it retired into reasoning of it arsenic money,” helium said. “You would telephone it benignant of rights to a information of a ledger that is ever unfolding going guardant successful time.”

The speech besides explores what blockchain reveals astir however humans signifier trust. “We are relational creatures, not idiosyncratic creatures,” Maurer said. “What blockchain has promised is simply a mode of creating that benignant of frame, but besides doing it successful a decentralized way.”

To perceive the afloat speech connected The Clear Crypto Podcast, perceive to the afloat occurrence connected Cointelegraph’s Podcasts page, Apple Podcasts oregon Spotify. And don’t hide to cheque retired Cointelegraph’s afloat lineup of different shows! 

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