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Greetings friends of Hive and Leofinance, it was time to post something here again after so long without appearing in these places of the Blockchain. I'm not much of a planner, I'm the kind of person who writes as the muse guides me. Recently I have felt the desire or need, I don't really know what to call this impulse to resume my writings here at LeoFinance..

I have always said, I am not an expert in finance or economics, even my financial education has been almost null until I came to Hive, Leofinance and the world of cryptos. Now I am one of the people who read daily financial news more often, I look for documentaries, workshops on youtube and more. I started trading with minimal capital, I have made more mistakes than successes but every step has been a learning experience.

Recently I thought that to relate to something, regardless of what it is. You have to know its substance, essence and history, maybe not in its totality, but as much as you can, that makes the relationship between us and what we want to relate to, a more personal, close and transparent encounter. Something that led me to think about the question:

What is money?

After searching for an answer that would satisfy my curiosity, I came across the definition that money is a unit of measure, a unit of exchange value. But, I didn't feel that this was enough. So I wanted to delve a little deeper into the history and etymology of the word money. Etymologically speaking, the word money comes from the name of the silver coin of ancient Rome, called denarius (denarius) which had a value of ten aces, that is, "denarius" derived from the Latin adjective "every ten".

Having satisfied my etymological curiosity, I continued my search for historical meaning, and discovered that according to the historian Herodotus, it was in Lydia, which today would be a region of Turkey, the first place to introduce gold and silver coins, about 800 years before the Christian era.

Now, before continuing with the historical data I must comment that after reading and learning about the history of money, I noticed that there have been major milestones or periods in the conception and evolution of what we can call money, evolution that also changed us as a society, I think there are four most notable moments in the historical development of money:

Barter

Coin

Paper

Bit

Let's take a leap back, although it will be of brief explanation, thousands of years ago, when we still lived in clans and there was no economic system, barter or exchange of products was what solved our needs, and gave way to what we can call economy. Then with the invention of currency, as I have already mentioned, we made another great cultural and psychological advance. Then came the first attempt at paper money, introduced by the last emperor of the Kan dynasty, Kublai Kan, grandson of Genghis Khan, who made paper a more valuable asset than gold.

In recent years, in the first decade of the 21st century, someone or perhaps a group of people calling themselves "SATOSHI NAGAMOTO " deployed the first digital currency. Something that caused a media avalanche, and opened a path that will be traveled by many so that, a decade later, there could be a whole sea of blockchain technologies, an unspeakable world of possibilities. Turning not only our psychology and conception of money upside down, but also giving a social twist. Attracting followers, and accumulating Haters.

I believe we live in an unprecedented historico-economic-financial moment, not only have we advanced in our worldview, but we have done so by making a leap and it has generated not only hope, but also a lot of fear. There is one topic in particular, thinking about it from the blockchain technology is a very interesting idea, and it is what we can understand as the "democratization of the sources of wealth generation ", but I will try to address that topic in another opportunity.

The truth is that, my readings and research on money in the history of mankind, which by the way, now I find it difficult to separate human history from the history of money. I came to the conclusion that money can be anything. Yes, money can be whatever we wish it to be, history shows us, we can make money a simple bill or piece of wood, or even a complex digital bit. Giving genesis to the question:

What makes money money?

I believe that as Adam Smith said: "Money is a matter of belief". What we believe money to be is what it will be, it sounds easy, but it is much more complex, it requires not only belief, but a social pact, a collective agreement to designate that this or that has a certain value. We are the people who grant the value. That was the basis of the first exchanges thousands of years ago, and it is still what underlies the blockchain system, or that is my humble opinion.

In short, value is something added by us and not something that dwells in things, but something that we ascribe to them. And so, I think money is whatever we want it to be. And paraphrasing the biblical passage, the treasure is where our attention and intention lies.

Thank you for reading.