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Money is anything which: is a store of value; is a medium of exchange; is a unit of account; is a standard for future payment. It needs to be durable, transpor

• ambyra 3y ago
  I was thinking about this the other day. They always confiscate prisoners’ cigarettes because they’re used as money. This actually makes the cigarettes more valuable if a prisoner can hold on to them. Imagine the look on the prisoners’ faces if the prison issued free and unlimited cigarettes to everyone. The entire economy would implode.
• pingou 3y ago
  Not always transportable: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rai_stones https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rai_stones
  • skybrian 3y ago
    This seems to be a ledger, except that it's not written down! Oral history as money. (Is a community's collective memory transportable?) > The ownership of a large stone, which would be too difficult to move, was established by its history as recorded in oral tradition rather than by its location. Appending a transfer to the oral history of the stone thus effected a change of ownership Compare with locations in a memory palace: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Method_of_loci https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Method_of_loci And to show that memory and consensus are what's important, it doesn't even matter if you lose the stone: > In one instance, a large rai being transported by canoe and outrigger was accidentally dropped and sank to the sea floor. Although it was never seen again, everyone agreed that the rai must still be there, so it continued to be transacted as any other stone.