A quick philosophical tour through what money is, what it means, how it works, and what it implies. How the past may indicate changes in the future. The surprising history of how humans have attempted to manage and symbolise value.

1. The Meaning of Mackerel
Daniel Marovitz
ceo- buzzumi
Twitter- @marovdan

2. What IS money?

3. All of them…

4. Flavors of Cash
Practically there are two types of money:
 Commodity money-
Gold, rice, salt, cod, barley, shells
 Fiat money- Money that has value by
decree- not because of intrinsic worth

5. What is it really?
• Money is information
– It records value
– It stores value
– It transfers value

6. Money is abstract and symbolic
 It can have limitless meaning, limitless
value, limitless power to compel action.
 There are few symbols that are as
extensible

7. Money is belief
If we have learned one thing in the financial crisis about
money:
 trust
 confidence
 emotion
Matter.
SIGNIFICANTLY

8. Emotion

9. How are humans different from
other animals?

10. The distinguishing point…
 Macaque monkeys barter grooming for
sexual attention
 Bees have a complex dance-based
language
 Wolves hunt with
forethought, coordination, and military-
style hierarchy
 Chimps and Sea gulls use tools

11. The development of money

12. Essentially Human
 Humans store the ability to
live, die, buy, dream, travel, and experience
in slips of meaningless paper….
 And increasingly in completely dematerialized
digital
01010101010101101010101011001010101
010101010101001010101010101010101

13. Wisdom of the Ancients
 The need to symbolize value and store the
memory of credit is very old.
 Standardized barley facilitated trading in
Mesopotamia in 3000BC
 On the Greek island of Aegina- silver coins
were minted in 700 BC.

14. Federal Prison
 Federal prisons of the USA
 US dollars- are banned
 In 2004 the US prison system banned
cigarettes.
 Cigarettes had been the currency of the
prison system for generations

15. NO cash……
NO Smokes…..
HOW do you trade?

16. Mackerel

17. Pouches of dead fish

18. It works like this…
Work
You now
have fishy Earn $
currency
Its oily and But “money”
stinky- don’t is only store
eat it! credit
Buy
1 mackerel at
pouch=$1 the store

19. Commodity money is complex…
Protein helps you build
Help you FIGHT
If you want to fight, eat

20. Price of toothpaste in “Macks”
2.5
2
1.5
1
Macks per tube3
0.5
0

21. What are the lessons?
 Trading is fundamentally human
 Creating symbols of value is ancient
 People use what they have- however odd
 Trust and heart matter as much as brain

22. Banks/Payments/eCommerce
 People will pay with mobiles- they are
what they have
 An interconnected world makes the legacy
infrastructure seem very legacy
 The rise of remote, individual, temp labor
has big implications for money
 Traditional financial players must
evolve……..or………

23. ….clients will find their own mackerel….