> Probably the best way to understand money is still the engineer's, "I do something that someone finds useful, so they give me points in this augmented-reality

> Probably the best way to understand money is still the engineer's, "I do something that someone finds useful, so they give me points in this augmented-reality game where the rules force them to give those points out of their own personal stash. As long as we collectively agree that useful things are happening, those points have some form of meaning as a way to symbolically trade hypothetical goods and services. When we lose this collective confidence then the points will no longer matter to us." Money is essentially a distributed IOU. It enables people to trade goods and services for IOUs. The IOUs are then exchangeable for other good and services at a later time. Obviously there's more complications then that but that's the general thing. Like if write code for a living and want a taco, the taco vendor doesn't want your code. Instead you sell your services (labor) to somebody who values that who gives you IOUs in return. Then you take those IOUs and you cash them for a taco or you can combine them with other IOUs you already have for bigger items like a car or a house. Then you can do all sorts of abstract things with your IOUs such as hold onto them, or lend them out (to somebody who needs a bunch of IOUs at a time and will pay them back slowly) or convert them to other kinds of synthetic IOUs (stocks). Then later on these other kinds of IOUs get covered/replayed back as money IOUs that you go buy your other tacos with. And lets not even get to IOU appreciation or deflation.