"Kublai Khan was ahead of his time: He recognized that what matters about money is not what it looks like, or even what it’s backed by, but whether people belie

"Kublai Khan was ahead of his time: He recognized that what matters about money is not what it looks like, or even what it’s backed by, but whether people believe in it enough to use it." That belief is based on some form of backing eventually. It could be a hard and liquid commodity or a government demanding taxes in that particular currency. The full article here http://spectrum.ieee.org/at-work/innovation/a-brief-history-of-money http://spectrum.ieee.org/at-work/innovation/a-brief-history-... Note that money has little to do with abstraction, but rather confidence. People hark back to the 'good old days' of hard money not because they're incapable of abstraction, but because they distrust a political authority to preserve that confidence.