Top Tweets for #BitStone

There is an island in the Pacific called Yap that uses circular stones as currency. The stones are too large to move so the ownership of the stones is passed by word of mouth to transact business. Economists love the tiny island called Yap located in the Pacific Ocean, because it helps answer this really basic question: what is money? There's no gold or silver on Yap. But hundreds of years ago, explorers from the island found limestone deposits on another island hundreds of miles away. And they carved this limestone into huge stone discs, which they brought back across the sea on their small bamboo boats. It is not clear if these stones began a currently immediately, but at some point in time the people on Yap realized what most societies realize. They needed something that everyone agrees you can use to pay for stuff. Like every society, the people of Yap took the thing they considered precious — their version of gold — and decided that was money. There was just one key thing about this money: it was really heavy. A big piece could weigh more than a car. They ended up talkimg about the stones themselves not changing hands at all. One person gives it to another person. But the stone doesn't move. It's just that everybody in the village knows the stone now has a new owner. The stone doesn't even need to be on the island to count as money. One time, according to the island's oral tradition, a crew was bringing a stone coin back to Yap on a boat. Due to a storm, the stone sank. The crew made it back to Yap and told everybody what happened. And everybody decided that the piece of stone at the bottom of the ocean was still good. This system, in the end, feels really familiar. If you go online to pay your electric bill, what's the difference with the stones?