From Barter to Bitcoin, from prehistory to the technological age
The concept of humanity is perceived as the bond of all cohabiting subjects in a society, within a set of societies. But when it comes to human nature, we can change this definition and happily say that humanity is: “buying and selling, its economy and transaction”. The first social groups known and documented by the ancient and contemporary historiography, are the hordes, the tribes and the clans, among whom, although there were great cultural and racial differences, they had something in common: the need to acquire goods and services, which for those primitive times they consisted of food and shelter. Since man appeared on the face of the earth, he has always done his best to meet his needs. One way to get things he lacked was barter. What is barter?
Defined by the Royal Spanish Academy of Language as the exchange of one thing for another, barter is an inelegant way to obtain resources or items that are needed. In short, barter would be a “give me what you have and I will give you what I have”. This practice, which is still used today, is possible because someone has a surplus of a certain good and therefore can exchange that good for another product owned by another individual or group.
Where and when did the barter start? Difficult to specify, but tells the story that this exchange of products happened for the first time, approximately, about 3.000 years BC, in ancient Mesopotamia, with the exchange, for example, of skins for fish, of pieces of metal for wheat.
But this primitive way of giving value to things, would leave many dissatisfied. And the passage of time would show that this system of trading, which seems to be gaining currency in some societies today, thanks to the economic problems of different kinds facing these nations, was not only unreliable, but impractical, since not only doubt the value of the products to be exchanged, but that their storage and transfer always offered problems.
This reason led societies to look for an element that would reflect the fair price of things, in addition to making exchange processes more suitable. The eyes of Assyrians, Phoenicians and Egyptians, settled on gold and silver. Thus these metals were for a long time, together with precious stones commercial exchange coins. History marks the beginning of this variation between 650 and 580 BC. in the kingdom of Lydia, today Turkey.
The space of this publication does not give much to tell the story of everything about the currency, so from those prehistoric times, I will jump to the seventh and ninth centuries, approximately, only to review that it was in ancient China that There was the creation of paper money. From there until today, going through the early twentieth, when they see the light, the first debit and credit cards, much has happened in relation to the representative sign of the price of things. All those changes that occurred today make us wonder: what will come next? The answer is … same game, identical players, but being in this 21st century fully involved technology … different tools!
One of those tools is currently Bitcoin. What is Bitcoin? In essence it is a currency like any other, which has the same purpose as the previous ones, making economic-financial transactions. Only that the Bitcoin has a significant plus for the actors, who can count on the assurance that their capital will not be devalued, converted into paper money, falsified or legitimized with capitals of dubious origin. In addition to the above, Bitcoin does not depend on any reserve in metals that the State controls at will.
Bitdharma appreciates Bitcoin as the first decentralized digital currency, “controlled by all”, an operative rate of “24/7”, reliable, fast and transparent transactions, which can be reviewed publicly; In addition, it values this advance, not as tomorrow, but as today.
Fulfilling the dream of Adam Smith, known as the father of economics; the cryptocurrency arrives in the 21st century, in the 2.0 era; developing the free market giving you more options in tools with fast operativity, having the ease of being changed by any currency in the world in just minutes. Assuming that Bitcoin hinders corruption and facilitates transparency since it is monitored by everyone, we can determine that from a practical point of view, in a short-term future, cryptocurrency can become the “wealth of nations”.
By Nicolás Peña / Bitdharma
