What is Money?

The internet is redefining our world as borderless. We need a transaction medium that can keep up.

Someone smarter than me once said that if we thought too hard about what money really is — it wouldn’t work.

An astute notion, for sure. Let’s begin to explore a bit.

Money. It’s a storer of value. What is value, you ask? Well, it’s defined as “the importance, worth, or usefulness of something.” Since the beginning of trade, people would swap things they considered valuable, like pretty stones, or fluffy sheep, to get things that they thought were more important, worthwhile, or useful. It’s human nature to want to switch up and make upgrades.

This practice has continued for years and humanity has seen money take many different shapes and forms… one thing has always remained constant, though, and that thing is the tangibility of money. This brings us to the newest iteration of money — cryptocurrencies.

Mo’ Money, Mo’ Problems

Money, in it’s paper form, has problems. One of those problems is its ease of carry. Cash, being the construct which it is, becomes physically burdensome as you start stacking the stacks. It quickly becomes unreasonable to make certain purchases in cash because of the hassle of having to deal with the facilitation of the process.

Not only is it burdensome, but this situation also leads to another one of the problems; security. It just isn’t safe to walk around with too much cash. Forget the potential of someone stealing the money, you could also drop it, damage it, misplace it, or spend the wrong amount.

Another issue is its adaptability. Not every currency can be transacted in every part of the globe. Currencies are tied to countries, and you would need to convert your currency to a local currency if you are visiting a foreign locale. This just seems like a time-consuming and burdensome task.

Finally, money is centralized and printed by the issuing country. This creates the danger of inflation. Issuing authorities could potentially print out as much money as they want, which would drive down the value, which would cause inflation and instability.

Web 3.0 Solutions

Cryptocurrencies offer solutions to the previously discussed problems, and more. Here are some reasons why:

• Convenient — You can store any amount in your digital wallet, and it doesn’t weigh you down in the physical sense.
• Secure — They store a record of transactions on their shared ledger, so they are tied to their owners. They cannot be misplaced or destroyed, unless you send them somewhere they shouldn’t go.
• Adaptable — They are the globalization of currency. They can be used anywhere in the world as they are a digital currency, with no need for conversion.
• Decentralized — Cryptocurrencies, like Ethereum and Bitcoin, are mined. This is a process that can be done by anyone, making their issuance decentralized. Also, at the time when cryptocurrencies are created, their total issuance amount is defined, protecting their values against inflation.

In our borderless world, we need solutions to be easy to use, safe, adaptable, and fair. Cryptocurrencies offer these solutions, plus more.