Liquidity. You can rely on anybody to want fungible money but not to want the particular stock you own, much less your spare apartment. The alternative, of cour

Liquidity. You can rely on anybody to want fungible money but not to want the particular stock you own, much less your spare apartment. The alternative, of course, is what is known as ”financial repression” whereby a state forced its citizens to operate almost exclusively on national financial assets. As regards to the various network topologies, it gets pretty ornery: forcing all banks to transact through a central bank, that acts as the guarantor, would eliminate counterparty risk. Allowing everybody to transact amongst themselves instead means you cannot keep track of who has what and so you cannot rely on ”netting” out debts and credits. The various systems available worldwide represent a kind of path-dependent compromise that favours the incumbent actors.