How much of our money is 'real'?

WHEELS WITHIN WHEELS

- 

What does it really mean that most currency is no longer backed by gold?

That isn't even really the question. The real question is: How much of our money is "real"?

And the answer is: It is impossible to say.

For instance, let's say that you put Rs 1 lakh in the bank. The bank uses it to issue a loan to a customer. That money is now in two places at once.

The customer who took the loan uses it to buy things; the person he pays uses it again. The money is now in multiple places at once. And that's not even accounting for how much of the original Rs 1 lakh was "yours" to begin with.

Anti-capitalists view this system as absurd, and it was partly as a mark of protest against this absurdity that Bitcoin was born. It was marketed as a fresh slate; anyone could get rich; there was no legacy wealth. Could it become the money of the future?

It turned out, of course, to be simply another social construct, entangled with those that came before it: money, legislation, security, adoption, legitimacy. The idea of cryptocurrency has since become woven into the idea of centralised money.