How Shiny Rocks Turned into Depression

Описание: Everybody wants money. People worship it, they do all sorts of things for it. And almost nobody actually understands where it comes from.

Money feels permanent, like it has always existed. But it hasn’t. It started as crops and cows, turned into metal stamped by kings, collapsed empires, fueled wars, survived depressions, and eventually transformed into numbers on a screen that most of us just agree are real.

In this video, I tell the complete history of money. From the barter economy and early commodity money in Mesopotamia, to metal coins and their debasement in the Roman Empire, from the gold standard and paper money to the Great Depression, an influential conference in some hotel in the US (Bretton Woods), and the rise of today’s so called "fiat" monetary system.

We’ll explore down how money actually works, how central banks create it, why inflation happens, why the gold standard ended, and how the modern financial system became something that is, technically speaking… mostly made up.

This is a dark and slightly sarcastic story about humanity’s (maybe) most powerful invention. A walkthrough of how shiny rocks became global finance, and how that is at least a little uncomfortable. If you’ve ever wondered what money really is, where it comes from, and whether it’s all just an elaborate collective hallucination… this is for you.

On this channel, I give moderately opinionated speeches every once in a while. In those, I discover the beautiful and not so beautiful oddities of being human. Stick around for the ride, I'm excited to see you here!