Debt is older than money itself

There's about $2.5 trillion of US cash in the world. Count what's sitting in Americans' accounts too, and you get more than $23 trillion. So where's the rest? It's numbers in a computer. And the strange part: that's how money started. Apply to sponsor us: soloeconomy.tv Chapters 0:00 Where's the rest? 0:51 The story we all learned 1:52 Money made of clay 3:12 The lion and the trick 4:34 The emperor's paper 5:43 Sticks, fire and goldsmiths 7:08 The anchor 8:53 The stone at the bottom of the sea Sources • Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations (1776), Book I ch. 4 • Caroline Humphrey, 'Barter and Economic Disintegration', Man 20(1), 1985 • Denise Schmandt-Besserat, From accounting to writing (UT Austin) • National Geographic: the Kushim tablet • Laws of Eshnunna; Code of Hammurabi, laws 48 and 117 (Avalon Project, Yale) • Michael Hudson, The Lost Tradition of Biblical Debt Cancellations • Sardis Expedition: John Kroll, The Coins of Sardis (Lydian electrum, lab analyses) • Denarius silver content (Harl, Coinage in the Roman Economy, 1996) • Hoover Institution: The Rise and Demise of Paper Money in Imperial China • Guan, Palma and Wu, Paper money and inflation in Yuan China (Manchester EDP-2207) • Marco Polo, The Travels (Yule ed.), the Khan's mint (Columbia AFE) • Dialogue of the Exchequer (Avalon Project); History of Parliament: the Westminster fire of 1834 • Bank of England Quarterly Bulletin 2014 Q1: Money in the modern economy; Money creation in the modern economy • Sveriges Riksbank: Stockholms Banco and Palmstruch • Bank of England: our history (1694) • Econlib: The Gold Standard (Bordo) • Executive Order 6102 (UCSB American Presidency Project); Federal Reserve History: Gold Reserve Act • Federal Reserve History: Creation of the Bretton Woods System; Nixon Ends Convertibility • Nixon, Address to the Nation, August 15, 1971 (UCSB) • FRED: Currency in circulation (WCURCIR), M2 (M2SL), CPI purchasing power (CUUR0000SA0R) • Satoshi Nakamoto, cryptography mailing list, Oct 31 2008; Bitcoin genesis block • William Henry Furness III, The Island of Stone Money (1910); Milton Friedman, The Island of Stone Money (Hoover, 1991) Narration: an AI clone of the creator's own voice (ElevenLabs Eleven v4). Characters: The Solo Economy cast, illustrated with AI image generation from the channel's reference sheets. Music and sound: generated with ElevenLabs. Animation: Armature. Real images (Wikimedia Commons): J. M. W. Turner, The Burning of the Houses of Lords and Commons (1834), public domain; Yuan dynasty banknote and printing plate (1287), photo PHGCOM, CC BY-SA 3.0; Electrum trite of Alyattes, Lydia, photo Classical Numismatic Group, CC BY-SA 3.0; Yap stone money, photo Marshman, CC BY-SA 3.0; Code of Hammurabi stele (Louvre), photo Gil Dbd, CC BY-SA 4.0. Portraits of Richard Nixon (White House, public domain) and Kublai Khan (National Palace Museum, public domain) traced to vectors. Other objects: illustrations made with AI image generation in the channel's style. Opening 3D shots: rendered in Blender from the channel's own models. Thumbnail: AI-rendered photograph. Maps: Natural Earth. #HistoryOfMoney #Money #Economics