I had a read of your essay. You should read “what is money?” by Alfred Mitchell-Innes. Some key things: The “double coincidence of wants” stylised by Adam smit

I had a read of your essay. You should read “what is money?” by Alfred Mitchell-Innes. Some key things: The “double coincidence of wants” stylised by Adam smith is most likely nonsense. Do we really believe that people didn’t trade if they didn’t have what each other wanted? What would really happen is that one would be in debt to the other and that debt would be repaid at some point in the future. It was only until recent times eg 1900s US that Gold and silver became a “medium of exchange”. That experiment has of course ended because it didn’t work particularly well -> deflation. In the past governments set some amount of precious metal as the unit of account but the issued coins were usually made of something else and were of different weights and sizes even for the same denomination of coin. The coins had a nominal value which was always greater then the intrinsic value of the coin (otherwise if the nominal value was the same or less than intrinsic value then people would melt the coins into bullion). These coins were an acknowledgement of indebtedness of the government. They held value because people needed to use them to pay taxes. Banks did not evolve from “gold warehouses”. Instead banks always have been and continue to be market makers for IOUs or debt/credit.