Right. Fundamentally, money is a common form of transferable debt. The web of repayment becomes so complicated that nobody bothers to track it and everybody agr

Right. Fundamentally, money is a common form of transferable debt. The web of repayment becomes so complicated that nobody bothers to track it and everybody agrees to the fiction that money can be used as a universal payment against any debt. It greatly simplifies trading. The invention of "bank money" (money that only exists in ledgers) was an optimization of this as it no longer required the movement of the debt carrier (money) across large distances but rather movement of information about debts. This was the foundation of Banking in Italy and it helped kick off the Medici families domination of Florence and the gains made from moving information (rather than the costs of moving money) improved European trading and funded the Renaissance. People and governments try to cheat the system by debasing the debt carrier and reducing its value, or by acting as middlemen in the exchange of debt carriers (currency converters, brokers, etc.). Inflation has sunk more than one large empire.