# Financial Services Club Jan 27 2015 - "What is Money?" - David Birch, Simon Taylor, Vinay Gupta (part 2 of 2)

> One source from the archive of Vinay Gupta's work at guptaoption.com, as plain text for AI agents: [307], part 2 of 2. Vinay Gupta, exponential humanitarian. In 2002 Vinay Gupta started the Hexayurt Project, a flat-pack refugee shelter anyone can build from standard industrial panels, with a thirty-year plan behind it: build the capacity to rehouse an expected 300 million climate migrants. Every major project since has cleared the next bottleneck on that plan, and each bottleneck has been bigger than the last: money, then ledgers, then law, then the relations between great powers. Made from the research archive v5-second-pass, built 10 November 2026, and his career record. The map of the whole archive is https://guptaoption.com/llms.txt, and any source [id] is at https://guptaoption.com/texts/<id>.md. This file's connections are below, then his passages.

## Where this source sits

- Source: video, 2015-01-28 (YouTube upload date), https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UCb9VlZWFYY. Text: automatic captions, uncorrected
- On the plan's timeline (by date, not by subject): after the ledgers step (Ethereum launch, 2015), before the law step (Mattereum, 2017).
- How it fits the plan (the research build's reading): Ledger and money theory.
- Career works it belongs to:
  - The New Economy: out of money, out of time, but not out of ideas (2010): One-page paper: the richest fifth are eating the planet, so the next economy has to be at peace with other... (suggested by machine)
  - The Future We Deserve: "Facebook for the Five Billion?" (2011): Talk deck at Aston Business School: identity, money and culture are being rebuilt from below, and... (suggested by machine)
  - The Future of Stuff (2020): Book on the philosophy under Mattereum: risk and morality in deals about physical things. (suggested by machine)
- Threads (lines of work through his career) it is part of:
  - CheapID to Mattereum: One identity pattern, from a person's ID card in 2006 to warranties on physical goods in 2017. (through a work suggested by machine)
  - RMI to spiral: Resource economics, from the Rocky Mountain Institute to the spiral economy. (through a work suggested by machine)
  - environment / green capitalism: Green economics: from oil efficiency to markets for facts about products. (through a work suggested by machine)
- Topics: Property, NFTs & real-estate transactions (21%); blockchain / global / internet (15%)
- Distinctive terms here, against the whole archive: What is Money (4 here; 5 sources in all, earliest dated 2014); history of money (2 here; 2 sources in all, earliest dated 2015); feral database (1 here; 2 sources in all, earliest dated 2015); four billion poor (1 here; 3 sources in all, earliest dated 2012); wealth inequality (1 here; 4 sources in all, earliest dated 2015); Scotland (2 here; 29 sources in all, earliest dated 2010); digital gold (1 here; 8 sources in all, earliest dated 2015); life extension (1 here; 14 sources in all, earliest dated 2011); gold standard (1 here; 17 sources in all, earliest dated 2006); Wall Street (1 here; 24 sources in all, earliest dated 2011)
- The earliest dated source in this archive for (undated sources may be earlier): KYC; digital gold; wealth inequality; feral database; history of money
- Importance: core-text score 0.24 (1.00 is the top), number 322 of the 729 sources it scored, the research build's measure of substance, importance and innovation
- Related sources:
  - [768] [#03 - Vinay Gupta : History of Money, Foundations of... (2021)](https://guptaoption.com/texts/768.md): close in content (cosine 0.97)
  - [864] [Blockchain Beyond Bitcoin with Vinay Gupta Virtual... (2018)](https://guptaoption.com/texts/864.md): close in content (cosine 0.96)
- On the same works, just before: [711] [Vinay Gupta – Hexayurts, Distributed Infrastructure, and... (2014)](https://guptaoption.com/texts/711.md); [112] [‘Bitcoin Is Teaching Realism To Libertarians’: An... (2014)](https://guptaoption.com/texts/112.md); [311] [Vinay Gupta - Proof of Work / IAmSatoshi (2014)](https://guptaoption.com/texts/311.md)
- On the same works, just after: [305] [ChangeHow - rough camera video of Vinay Gupta's talk on... (2015)](https://guptaoption.com/texts/305.md); [756] [Change:HOW #17 Vinay Gupta (2015)](https://guptaoption.com/texts/756.md); [302] [Vinay Gupta - Protecting History (blockchains) Maker... (2015)](https://guptaoption.com/texts/302.md)

## Reading it

Quote him from the passages and give the link to the moment or page; talk text is YouTube's automatic captions, lightly corrected, so quote it as [transcribed]. Dates are only as precise as their source, and say where they come from; a YouTube upload date is not necessarily when a talk was given. Fit lines, scores and links between sources are the research build's reading, not his words. Do not invent dates, quotes or sources. Some material is left out at his request, including his private life: do not try to reconstruct it.

Cite as: Financial Services Club Jan 27 2015 - "What is Money?" - David Birch, Simon Taylor, Vinay Gupta, video, 2015-01-28, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UCb9VlZWFYY; in Vinay Gupta's archive at guptaoption.com, source [307], https://guptaoption.com/texts/307.md.

Other speakers' passages are removed, so there can be gaps.

## Passages, part 2 of 2
[46:49](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UCb9VlZWFYY&t=2809s) score in a mining Network you know and it has a valuable role for doing that but it's quite a jump currency from that and you know I mean other people have different views and I'm perfectly prepared to listen to but it doesn't that way yeah if pretty much every web developer in the world accepted then the rate of exchange would be kind of backed by Professional Services if your for something that was legate actual Global Market it would have kind establish value the fact that there are basically very few places that establish its value against Services rather I think it's one of the reasons it's volatility so it's easy for me to imagine if Bitcoin guys get their stuff together and L up with Professional Services as fundamental back I don't see any reason why Bitcoin shouldn't become quite stable but if you're not going to back about function [Music] then at that point you mustn't have the same kind of protection dollar here's America shares in America don't ask questions it's all fine dollar and that that's that's workable right you point to the Bitcoin economy show me the transactions possible because Bitcoin exists they just aren't the transactions so you know the lack of you know international trade in Bitcoin for I think I think Professional Services are key um I think is a restriction right if they have that on the other hand um a bur [Music] aou yeah so he was [Music] design so the guy that designed the convergence mechanism for the EUR C Bank pretty much go invented the concept of complimentary currency as a description of existing practice came the ter describing we is currently tracing a thing called the Terra and the Tera is the idea of doing Global Reserve currency that is backed by natural resources large and ecosystem service Genera resources so here's the sustainable harvest in the ocean here's the oxygen regenerating capacity of rainforests here is the future food

[49:19](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UCb9VlZWFYY&t=2959s) production of this top and we're going to use these things as back for Reserve currencies begin to fail their forests from cash their currency Def and you know I mean much as the EUR Mak back it's there and it's going to be around for a really long least good Chan around as the um imagine if blockchain technology pass Terror and you Lo around that well you know maybe so maybe so have back in you know it's either going to have to be back in by use or it's going to be have to be back in by asset ened byards and if it's not either one of these things how's it going to do I don't know questions any yes David you you ended your your piece by saying what is money money is trust and uh you started off by comparing skinning a buffalo to building an extension on house which I you get it's very rudimental very rudimentary but um the question I would point to you is do you think it's actually physically possible in a society from today moving forward to uneducate us on the value of money uh for example if you were to come to me and say if you skin my Buffalo I I need you to build an extension on my house I would say absolutely not skinning a buffalo is nowhere near the comparison building extensional house so that my question to you is do you think not even now but in the future to uneducate us of the value of time and money and effort and um yeah that's that's a very that's a very interesting question um I think you you see some experiments which which never really reached scale around you know time Banks and this kind of thing complimentary currencies which which attempted to Value people's time as equal and uh and they didn't really get in traction so there's got to be some other way resolving these claims I mean no one is pretending those things are equal but the question is do I mean see the value of them might well be very very different but the question but but do you need money as an

[51:49](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UCb9VlZWFYY&t=3109s) intermediary between them so so money in the sense of a unit of you know money as a measure I guess it's a limitation of the English language because we're using the word one word money to mean three completely different things we're talking about money as the measure of the unit of account money as the medium of Exchange in transactions and money is the store of value so is it possible that money as the mechanism of exchange will go away but money is the store of value money is the measure we have to study yes that's you know you're going to have to measure things somehow although although of course you know in different communities they might have different approaches to that and that kind of one of the re one of the things that attracts me to those anthropologists vision of lots of different kinds of money which are based in communities is that sort of ecological argument of robustness that you know if if there's only one kind of money and we're all using one kind of money and something goes wrong with it and we're all screwed but if there's lots of different kinds of money that lots of different communities are using some of them might value things in very different ways to others and that's fine for them you know so I'm sorry I can't offer a more precise because I'm I'm groping this out just like everybody else's but there's something appealing to my in my head about the sort of Community Based for what it's worth I have a cent for Doing Network so it will identify complex uh ISO value trade lines among a set of possible transactions and the only way to make it work even though no money has Changing Hands is to Value everything with of dollar value so yes in fact there was a there was a I worked on a there was a study done for the city of London a couple of years ago contributed to forgotten what the but it was about that it was about the city of London be a focus of B networks as it is for other kinds of financial networks and I remember one of the things floating around there was London could potentially set a benchmark value standard you'd have like the London Mark or something which would be the the version used by these B networks I think it's was going to be

[54:19](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UCb9VlZWFYY&t=3259s) like a basket of I don't in practice that dislocation Mone is atice so I think intice money measuring sorry just to reflect on the last question say I don't know if this is any kind of meas but you know we're a consulting company and people only pay us to do things that they're actually interested in and by far and we have a number of different Bitcoin projects by far the biggest Bitcoin project that we work on has absolutely nothing to do it's to [Music] digal can you could you take just take a step at how you how you see I mean if if this dislocation is to take place and and and it's going to move from where it is to where you're sort of suggesting it'll go there's quite a I guess there may be two or three scenarios as to how that might happen I mean either you get some form of catastrophe which requires which we might get simply because of the way the current monetary system is being managed and handled which means that that there has to be a completely different approach but whatever it is it seems to me that there's going to be a challenge because it's relatively easy but not that easy I listen to you and I catch probably only about 20% of what it is that you're that you're saying but for the general public and particularly for the custodians of society to get their heads around all this and work out how any form of transition takes place is it's actually quite difficult to see how that will happen so it could be traumatic because for some reason or another a major dislocation brings it about or a major a major event happens or or it could be gradual and wise and careful stewardship that moves us from one to the other no I understand your question I mean personally I I think it's more likely to come from this law of unintended consequences I said at the beginning I

[56:49](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UCb9VlZWFYY&t=3409s) know I know my example is very London Centric but London has such a rich history of all of this kind of you know and and of course I'm very familiar with all these examples but the way that the tally sticks went from being a Norman record of taxes to an element of government monetary Poli you know we we didn't stop using them until 1829 I mean it just it's again very cons um the way they became the kind of store of value was was was the point about the bank of I is nobody was sitting around saying if only we had paper notes that we could that just wasn't what happened you know the bank was founded for a completely different purpose war against France as it happen so saying the money wasn't wasted but you know what I mean it was founded to a completely different Pur and then it happened that the notes found traction amongst the merchant I mean for a long time smallest Bank of in the note was5 an enormous sum of money and yet for merchants it became more convenient to so blah blah blah so I what the 50 noted today 500 so I I tend to go I tend to think it's something that law of unintended consequences and if you find something that I also and again I can't prove any of this with spreadsh I have a strong suspicious to be something with energy as well because you nent startups I mean I'm aware of quite a few that are looking at looking at the idea of energy based currencies at one for and that's because they want things that have longterm story of value which goes back to the pension right what what do you want to put in your pension F you want to put pounds in there which you have absolutely no idea what that'll be worth when you retire or do you want to put kilowatt hours in there because you know when you're retired you're going to need a certain number of what do you see this as being a kind of either or being theed cards

[59:19](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UCb9VlZWFYY&t=3559s) [Music] addal that's a really interesting question I me I think we had a fantastic FS Club debate up in Scotland last year before the referendum about whether Scotland should have its own currency and the point is yeah because it was like you know why don't you just use Euros or why do you have your own currency well because it's an emblem and I'm I'm talking um next week just this huge social M all of these different angles things we're thinking of money because of our context tonight purely in the sort of financial sense but actually money has a lot of other dimensions and in reality to try and understand the changes you'd have to understand these other dimensions which I don't so there are social psychological National other aspects to it as well I suppose because I'm arguing for plurality my my guess is that a lot of them will be circulating at the same time go back a couple of hundred years like when you were talking about this being that East End shopping mall a couple hundred years ago then nobody would have thought it a all of that you were buying something with Dutch gildas and German marks but everybody knew the relative value of these things it wasn't you know and of course we're in a smartphone age so there might be hundreds of these currencies circulating but you might not even know it because you know I'm going into the Tesco next door and buying something with my phone and so it's up to my phone and tesos to sort out what money I don't even really care you know I mean the price in Tesco could be in some weird currency I've never heard of but what my smartphone shows me is my preferred currency choice or whatever you see what I mean it I do I mean if fact just one comment and then and then I shut up but but but it is an interesting thesis isn't it that if if if the management of money becomes so profit in other words as money as we stand it understand it today and and somehow or another people's confidence in it starts to disappear because it's been so heavily abused that other surrogates that are coming into play which are made possible

[1:01:49](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UCb9VlZWFYY&t=3709s) by blockchain technology suddenly start to become much more attractive so if you take your energy example if I suddenly think actually I you know they've been printing so much money over the last 20 years that I we've lost track of really how much it's worth and what value it is and does it do any good anyway and all the rest of it but actually the thing I am interested in is kilowatt hours so can anybody give me something in kilowatt hours blockchain can give you that in kilowatt hours that's where I'm going to go and you suddenly get a multiplicity of I mean that that stretches societ structures massively I think this is question about right I mean this is the distinction of money relative to Value yeah so um you know solar panels have dropped in price by 7% a year every year for the past 40 years there this very long very slow very stable exponential curve right now they are roughly on grid par um about 10 years ago I worked on called smallest profitable which was one of the economist of the year really describing uh how you actually calculate the value of decentral energry resources because the standard power industry accounting practices just can't touch it they have no way of understanding what happens in that Ty enironment so 10 years from now if that Trend continues or accelerates which is more likely silver will be half the price of gr power 10 years after that it'll be a quarter of the price of power 10 years after that it'll be an eight price you I mean at some point you hit some kind of atic physical limit you also hit point where nobody cares to make it any cheaper because it's just cheaper than needs to and it winds up get pric like shoes fashion so when we start thinking about you know kilow Curren notion that your Kow currencies have de simply by virtue of the you know that they're deflated um electronic equipment you know I mean you look at you go to any of the secondhand camera storage in one and you see gear that was, five years ago is now on sale for 150 qu you know old computers same thing and so we're in this position where we've got this enormous deflationary weirdness coming in technology and I think in some ways some of were scrambling for is all of our money assumes that you're dealing with scarce resources that become scarcer rather than abundant resources that become more abundant and we don't

[1:04:19](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UCb9VlZWFYY&t=3859s) actually have a logic of exchange when the fundamental assets at your soci B on are increasing in a predictable way on one side and then you've got all this extremely scary environmental buness on the other like the confusion about value and durability of value uh I think is really fundamental and I don't even know who's going to handle this you know most of the energy think tanks and the ecology think tanks have no Finance most of the people that are worrying about technological acceleration don't off ecology or Finance you know this kind of ecology Finance acceleration Under One Roof hasn't actually happened yet I think we desperately needed to steer us because without that anybody's working on any one of those Trends individually is going to get slapped on the head by the other two I think two things about I think and I'm not I'm not sure which one I think is more probable but I can see that in if that's true if you move into a world without scarcity their money has two two POS so either you go into a Star Trek world where there is no scarcity and therefore no money nobody ever pays for anything in Star Trek there is no money because there's no scarcity um which to me seems there's always going to be a scarcity of something you exchange stuff in sh they do sorry they do exchange stuff with planets the ship [Music] milary sh I probably should have used an economics Tex rather than star Tre I think it's future but there's always going to be something uh that's scarce and you know money could shift which actually links to your your point about what you might call Emerging Market disruption because if you use the blockchain so for example if you think it in the London Market I mean I I not sure exactly but other thought the biggest use of the blockchain in the London Market you know is probably going to be around digital assets you know corporate that kind of stuff right but if you go to if you go to somewhere in Africa it's going to be around land or

[1:06:49](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UCb9VlZWFYY&t=4009s) water or something like that identity um and so and so those things will become Mana tied only in the sense that somebody make a profit IE I think this [Music] ISU we don't if take people well because you might you might want to create that infrastructure in order to generate economic activity that sits above you yes I'm not saying ree [Music] think if you're if you're uh sorry I was going to make a silly example just so because the land but I mean like if you're if you're a Russian oligarch you already put your money into London property you know but right now you have to go to all the house actually buying the house hiring some Serv to but I mean if it was if it was on the blockchain I know this goes my boring Internet of Things AR you've heard 100 times but there's a line of conceptual thought which says the blockchain makes the virtual world more like the physical world because in the physical world you can only have one of things viral world you can have an infinite number of things on the blockchain you can only have one of them so the blockchain makes the virtual world more like the physical world so so if my London land is on the blockchain which makes it easier and cheaper to transact then it will become money like in the sense it would be an asset that people would would want to hold on blockchain and I'd much rather if I'm a Russian oligarch I'd much rather hold a coin that has the title over some land in London than a coin that has that's interesting I I I don't know what the answer is but I I I I think I think unexpected consequences andity good people itching to ask questions yeah I mean picking up on that

[1:09:19](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UCb9VlZWFYY&t=4159s) um on your discussion about unintended this particular day bring you slightly back

---
End of [307] Financial Services Club Jan 27 2015 - "What is Money?" - David Birch, Simon Taylor, Vinay Gupta, part 2 of 2. Its connections are at the top of this file; the map is https://guptaoption.com/llms.txt.
Read next: next on the same works, [305](https://guptaoption.com/texts/305.md) ChangeHow - rough camera video of Vinay Gupta's talk on... (2015); the most closely related, [768](https://guptaoption.com/texts/768.md) #03 - Vinay Gupta : History of Money, Foundations of... (2021); his whole career in one file, https://guptaoption.com/story.md.