>"There's a lot of overlap between that and money issued by that specific government, but they are not the same thing. For instance, Spanish milled dollars ("pi

>"There's a lot of overlap between that and money issued by that specific government, but they are not the same thing. For instance, Spanish milled dollars ("pieces of eight") were legal tender in the United States until 1857." You might notice that I am addressing current phenomena. gold and silver were once legal tender, as were clay tablets in various jurisdictions. For all practical purposes, governments currently only use money they control and issue as legal tender (though there are exceptions suchas Zimbabwe). >"Your definition of "money" appears to be "anything of value" but that makes the term "money" meaningless." This is not true. You can see the comments above and below where I specifically stated the criteria for a thing being money are that it is a "medium of exchange". I would not describe steel as a medium of exchange, but bitcoin definitely seems to be. >"Money is stuff that accepted by everyone (or almost everyone) as payment for goods, services, and debts." If this is your requirement, then why are currencies used in foreign countries by very small populations considered currency in the USA? There are probably more people using bitcoin in the USA (or the world for that matter) than there are people using Cuban, Chilean, Kazakhstan, or Israeli-issued currency.