Money, Ledgers & the Payment Riddle
Required Readings:
‘The Invention of Money’ The New Yorker John Lancaster (July 29, 2019)
‘A Brief History of Money’ IEEE Spectrum (May 30, 2012)
‘What is Money? An Artist’s Make and Take’ Wall Street Journal video (November 11, 2014)
‘A Brief History of Ledgers’ LLFOURN, Medium (February 15, 2018)
‘Bitcoin and Cryptocurrency Technologies, Preface — The Long Road to Bitcoin’ Clark (pages 3 – 21)
(February 9, 2016)
Study Questions/Issues to Prepare:
1) What do the roles (medium of exchange, store of value, & unit of account) and characteristics
(durable, portable, divisible, uniform, acceptable & stable) of money mean historically and in
today’s digital economy?
2) What is fiat currency, what are its ledgers and how it fits within the history of money?
3) How does Bitcoin fit within the history of money, the emergence of the Internet and failed
attempts of cryptographic payment systems?