The tricky thing in all cryptocurrency conversations is you have to engage in a reasoned discussion of "what is money" and "what is money for" and that seems to be a discussion that anthropologists and historians are better suited to take on than economists or computer scientists.

Graeber argues that money exists as a token-based system of exchange between parties that have no trust. Parties that have trust have been unfairly shoved into the "barter system" - this is inaccurate because "barter system" means "I trade you this goat for two chickens" when aboriginal "barter systems" are actually "you are Sooki's cousin so I'm going to give you a chicken because Sooki is my friend and she totally helps me out whenever I have a problem and she hasn't specifically warned me away from dealing with you so even if you never help me out in return I know Sooki will." "Barter economies" are actually "favor economies" and tokens of value emerge invariably where itinerant traders, nomads and rival tribes are concerned. Graeber went as far as arguing that the basic unit of hard currency the world over is generally worth one adult male slave but then, he's an anarchist.

In a favor economy, the value is guaranteed by the relationship between the buyer and seller. In a commodity economy, the value is guaranteed by the intrinsic value of the commodity being exchanged. So long as we all agree gold is valuable we can trade gold. If I'm more into cowrie shells? It's gonna take you a lot of gold to buy what I'm selling. Classic example, the Dutchman Peter Minuit "buying" Manhattan Island for the Dutch West India Company from the Delaware Indians for 60 guilders. Except (A) the Delaware Indians didn't "own" Manhattan Island (B) or live on it (C) or consider land as being something you could sell. Really, three Delaware Indians probably got some great beads and trinkets in exchange for permitting the Dutch West India Company safe passage across someone else's hunting ground.

In a legal tender economy, which is what the world runs on, the value of the token is guaranteed by the government that stands behind it. You can exchange a green-printed piece of linen for a Snickers bar in the United States because the United States government says you can. They say no such thing about Baht, Ringgit or Shillings so if you want to use some other government's currency you need to trade it across for something merchants will take. Otherwise you're left to haggle; towards the end of the summer merchants in southern BC will generally go 1:1 on the US dollar because get out of here Yankee and if you'd like a better deal, exchange your damn cash.

This is simplified through debit cards and cashless transactions. You run your Dutch bank card at an American cash register and it will convert on the fly at the end of the day and add a service fee. However, this depends on (1) a treaty between the United States and the Schengen Area (2) A treaty between the Schengen Area and The Netherlands (3) you and your bank.

Enter crypto.

Cryptocurrency is literally trustless. Nobody has to back it. This is the stumbling block that took me a while to get over. You can't "hack" cryptocurrency and make the value change; everyone supporting the network (everyone "mining" at the moment) has a copy of every transaction made with the currency and if your record of transactions doesn't match the rest of the world, you get kicked out of the consensus. Your transaction is invalid. It doesn't go through. Wanna change that? You need to get the majority of the miners agree. If 51% of miners agree you have ten times as much currency on Thursday as you did on Wednesday, poof you're rich. Otherwise, fuck off. We don't care if you're a government, a criminal enterprise or St. Friedman himself.

The Fed has been printing money like the end of the world is at hand. You can't do that with crypto. The US government will do things like say Iran can't use the SWIFT banking network. You can't do that with crypto. A surprising amount of domestic and foreign policy is executed through currency controls - take those away and the economic power of the government (all governments!) is greatly diminished.

That's the real stumbling block that nobody likes to talk about because anyone who deals with "real" money recognizes that you're a heretic subject to stakeburning. But at its core, the fundamental feature of cryptocurrency is it converts governments from issuers to customers. And it does so in a distributed fashion that theoretically can never be countered or defeated.

And that upsets a lot of apple carts.