PART 1: THE STONE MONEY SAGA

Okay, this is WILD - imagine using stones as big as a car as money! That's exactly what happened on an island called Yap. But here's the crazy part:

• The stones were MASSIVE (up to 4 tons!)
• They didn't even move them when making payments
• Everyone just remembered who owned which stone

But here's why it actually worked:

• The stones weren't from Yap (had to import them = rare)
• Super hard to make new ones (like Bitcoin's mining difficulty)
• Everyone knew who owned what (like a blockchain!)

This system lasted for hundreds, maybe thousands of years.

PLOT TWIST!

Enter Captain O'Keefe (1871), who was like: "What if I... got modern tools and made tons of these stones?"

• The locals were NOT having it
• The chief was like "Nah, those are fake stones"
• But some people accepted them anyway
• Drama ensued
• RIP stone money system

PART 2: THE BEAD MONEY SCANDAL

Next up: Glass beads in West Africa that were like ancient designer goods:

• Super rare and precious
• Made into jewelry
• Nobody could make more easily

Until... Europeans showed up with their glass-making tech.

The Europeans went: "Oh, you think these are valuable? Hold my beer..."

• They started mass-producing beads in Europe
• Brought them to Africa
• Traded them for valuable stuff
• Created one of history's biggest scams

PART 3: SEASHELLS AND CATTLE (YES, REALLY)

Seashells as Money:

• Used literally everywhere
• Hard to find = valuable
• Until better boats came along and made finding them too easy
• Value went to zero

Fun fact: The word "salary" comes from salt (because people used it as money)

PART 4: THE BIG LESSON

Here's what makes money work:

• It needs to be hard to make more of
• Once it gets easy to make more = game over
• This happened to EVERY type of ancient money. Modern boats, tools, and tech killed them all.

You can think of it like this:

If everyone could print Robux whenever they wanted = Robux would be worthless

If everyone could mint their own verified badge on X = what's the point?

THE BOTTOM LINE

The Yap chiefs knew what was up:

• Easy money = Bad money
• Hard money = Good money

Making more money doesn't make people richer - it just makes the money worth less

Next time someone says "Bitcoin is weird", remind them about the giant stones that people used as money!

In the next blog post we’ll dive into the Gold Standard.