A short presentation on money and currencies in the context of Bitcoin Geneva Bitcoin meetup - 2014-11-19

1. Past and future of money and
currencies
Luca Bertagnolio
E: luca@berta.com
T: @lucaberta
Bitcoin Meetup Geneva - 2014-11-19

2. Money or currency
● I've searched around and there seems to be
quite a lot of confusion on the actual meaning
of these two words
● In a lot of cases they are considered to be
synonym
● Let's consider them synonyms for now

3. The 3 main functions of a currency
● Every currency has 3 main functions:
1.Medium of exchange
2.Unit of account
3.Store of value
●No currency is perfect on all 3 qualities, each
one has tradeoffs

4. The 4 types of currencies
● Currencies can be categorized by:
– Being commodity based OR fiat
– Being issued privately OR by a government
Commodity
based Fiat
Privately
issued IOUs Bitcoin
Government
issued
Gold standard
notes
Most “modern”
currencies

5. Medium of exchange
● Is a more efficient way to exchange products
and services compared to barter
● It is an intermediary between parties in a trade
● A good medium of exchange should satisfy
some specific qualities to be mutually accepted

6. Qualities of a medium of exchange
● Durability: metals/gems vs grain/tobacco
● Transportability: paper vs metals
● Divisibility: metals vs cattle/grains
● Non-counterfaitability: paper vs gold
● Fungibility: shells vs coins vs bullion vs gems

7. Primitive mediums of exchange

8. Unit of account
● A standard measurement of the value of goods
● Allows for comparison of goods
● Preferably a stable unit of measure, but if an
inflationary currency is used, over time the
value will change
● Can be the same as the medium of exchange,
but there are cases in which prices are set in
one currency, and settled with another one

9. Store of value
● A way to save wealth today, and retrieve it in the future
● Supply and demand are the drivers of the value
● Not only typical of currencies, but of assets in general
● Examples of store of values are:
– Gold, silver, diamonds, art
– Real estate
– Reserve currencies, stocks, bonds

10. The case of the stones of Rai (1/2)
● In the island of Yap in Micronesia, large circular
stones have been used as money
● Since these are large
and heavy, and thus fail
on the transportability
aspect, how could they
be used as money?

11. The case of the stones of Rai (2/2)
● The stones did not need to be moved, but were rather used
as “tokens” during transactions
● If a stone was to be transferred to someone else, all that was
needed was recording this fact into a “public ledger” which
was shared verbally between all the participants in this market
● Thus the stones were effectively a store of value, and so
would qualify as money due to the network effect
● This is precisely the reason why Bitcoin can be considered
money too, since the block chain is a public ledger

12. Why does Bitcoin have value?
● Main reasons:
– It's based on a trusted public ledger
– It does not suffer from debasing like fiat currencies
– Supply is fixed and slowly increasing
– Demand is growing rapidly
● There is a powerful network effect and this
creates a market which goes beyond borders,
for the very first time, thanks to the Internet

13. Money or currency, take two
● My view is that the real difference between
currency and money lies in the store of value
● Most modern fiat currencies would not qualify
as money, since they are a terrible store of
value given how the rate of inflation and money
printing is affecting the supply

14. Is Bitcoin currency or money?
● Bitcoin is a private currency, but is not backed
by any physical asset, so it is fiat in nature
● But since it is not coined by a government, and
its supply is limited to 21 million BTCs, it can be
a solid long term store of value unlike common
fiat currencies
● In my view, this qualifies Bitcoin as money

15. Risks of Bitcoin as money
● Bitcoin is very recent, while gold has been around
for thousands of years
● In case of network issues, no new transactions
can be made, but the current blocks remain valid
● The Bitcoin network could be infiltrated and
disturbed by those who don't like to see it
succeed, and this would drive the value down
● The worst case would be an attack from a crypto
standpoint, but the Bitcoin code is always being
studied to improve it and avoid such issues

16. Sources of information
● A good amount of information comes from the
University of Nicosia free MOOC on Digital
Currencies, Lesson 1 “(Brief) History of money”
http://digitalcurrency.unic.ac.cy/free-introductory-mooc
● All images come from Wikipedia and are
licensed under Public domain via Wikimedia
Commons
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Main_Page