In the seventh episode of Separating Money and the State, Leopoldo Bebchuk, anthropologist and author of the book Current currencies, social currencies and cryptocurrenciesquestions the classic economic narrative that presents barter as the origin of money and currency as a solution to the double coincidence of desires.
Based on ethnographic evidence and authors such as David Graeber and Paul Einzig, it shows that money does not have a single origin or a linear evolution: in many societies there were complex systems of debt, credit and reciprocity without a market or commodity currency, and barter only appears in contexts of low trust.
Bebchuk analyzes Mostafa Moini’s theory according to which money is primarily an abstract social relationship (a right or credit) and currency only its measuring instrument. This separation allows us to understand that money is always credit before merchandise and that the qualities of each monetary instrument are circumstantial and contextual.
The most relevant:
- Barter was not the universal precursor of currency; It appears only in low trust relationships.
- Credit and social obligation logically precede currency; Money is first an abstract relationship.
- The monetary properties of an instrument (scarcity, durability, divisibility) matter, but they are circumstantial and contextual.
- Ethnographic examples such as the Rai stones or the Banks Islands show that decentralized currencies can be stable or catastrophic depending on social rules.
- Bitcoin does not need to follow the classical order (medium of exchange → unit of account → store of value); It entered first as a store of value and that is valid.
- Satoshi’s original intention was a P2P digital cash system, but the 21 million limit and social dynamics turned it into a store of value.
- Bitcoin usage varies geographically: more transactional and libertarian in regions with weak currencies; more corporate in countries with strong currencies.
- Bitcoin has already technically managed to separate money from the State: it is a global monetary system, resistant to censorship and without a central issuer.
- Dollarized stablecoins extend the hegemony of the dollar and delay full bitcoinization in many countries.