Andreas Antonopoulos: The Essence of Money

The Bitcoin currency is unlike any other form of money we have ever seen before. First of all as a form of money it does not exist in physical form it is the culmination of a trajectory we've seen in human history over thousands of years. Money has become a more abstract form of value you start with very very tangible forms of money because you can eat them and they rot or die. They're not very good forms of money because they are the thing of value. We went from that to gold precious metals and stamped coins these are better forms of money because you cannot eat them they do not die or rot they do not represent the value itself they are not the value and this is an interesting concept. Money is not the valuable thing itself, money is the thing you exchange for the valuable thing itself. The reason bananas are not good money is because bananas are the value you're trying to get, money is the thing you exchange for bananas that has no value in itself it is simply a symbol an abstraction, it represents something that can be carried that I can give to someone tomorrow and they will probably give me bananas; that future promise of value is the essence of money.