Moneylike
My September, 2022 column for Locus Magazine
“Five thousand quatloos that the newcomers will have to be destroyed.”
Quatloos. Credits. Euros. Dollars. Dogecoin.
Wait, Dogecoin?
At some point in your life, you’ve probably asked yourself, “What is money?” There’s something existential about pulling a bank-note out of your wallet and asking yourself, “Why does so much of my waking life revolve around getting more of these slips of green paper?” (outside of the USA, you may ask yourself, “Why does so much of my waking life revolve around getting more of these slips of colo(u)rful polymer?” but you get the idea).
The decade-plus era of cryptocurrency has popularized the answer from Econ 101: “Money is a store of value, a unit of account and a unit of exchange.” That is: money is a thing you can use to save up for future needs (“a store of value”), a way to keep track of what you can afford, what you’re owed and what you owe to others (“a unit of account”) and something others will accept in exchange for their labor or goods (“a unit of exchange”).
There’s even a folk-tale about how money came about: in the beginning (the folk-tale goes), we all bartered with one another in the marketplace. I’d bring my fat cows and you’d bring your champion-laying hens and we’d try to arrive…
