Legacy Money
throughout history, humans have tried countless forms of money - each failing in its own way, each teaching us what perfect money must be. from shells to digital databases, every iteration has revealed another aspect of money's fundamental requirements.
Primitive Money
our earliest forms of money reveal humanity's basic understanding of what money requires:
• glass beads: too easily manufactured
• stones: too heavy, immobile
• salt: decays, dissolves
• cattle: can die, requires maintenance
Precious Metals
gold and silver seemed perfect until their flaws emerged:
• expensive to transport
• easily confiscated
• must be stored securely
• can be debased by rulers
• cannot be sent digitally
Paper Money
fiat currencies reveal the fatal flaw of trust-based money:
• requires trust in issuers
• controlled by governments
• loses value over time
• subject to political manipulation
• can be frozen or confiscated
Digital Fiat
modern banking's digital layer adds new vulnerabilities:
• dependent on banking system
• subject to censorship
• vulnerable to cyber attacks
• centrally controlled
• privacy nightmare
Modern "Investments"
today's financial instruments are complex but fundamentally flawed:
• bonds: yield less than inflation
• real estate: illiquid, high maintenance
• commodities: storage costs, spoilage
• derivatives: counterparty risk
The Pattern of Decay
each form of money follows a similar pattern of decay:
• becomes easier to produce
• gets captured by power structures
• suffers from debasement
• eventually fails completely
The Requirements Emerge
through these failures, we can see what perfect money requires:
• impossible to debase
• resistant to capture
• digitally native
• self-custodial
• mathematically verified
each failed form of money has taught us something essential about what money must be. bitcoin isn't just another iteration - it's the culmination of these lessons, the first form of money that solves every problem revealed by history's failures.