This is kind of a disingenuous story. Coins were not particularly burdensome, relative to paper. Gold is light. Anyway, people always used credit mostly. A pho

This is kind of a disingenuous story. Coins were not particularly burdensome, relative to paper. Gold is light. Anyway, people always used credit mostly. A phoenician ship at a minoan harbor didn't need to buy gold in order to trade purple dyes for bronze ingots and olive oil. They used hardor-credit or something. It was probably "gold backed" too, in the sense that it was denominated in gold or silver even if no metals were present. Money and credit are intertwined. We can always make money by loaning it to eachother. I think both the crypto-libertarian sm and Krugman's veiled response to it miss that point. Also, neither have much to do with cryptocurrency's success or lack thereof.