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Comment by sytelus | Hacker News Reader

That's exactly how it works. When you issue IOU, you issue your own currency. When a company issues stock, they are in fact issuing their own currency. All contracts are in fact a currency that can be sold, bought, invested and transacted. World debt is far far larger than actually currency in circulation. How does that happen? Because we make up "currency" all the time.

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No, contracts are not currencies. The whole point of distinguishing between currencies and other securities/debt is that a currency has the property of being a widely used medium of exchange.

The contract I have with my plumber to plumb my toilet is not something you can use to buy lunch.

No, that's not the same thing at all. For every other example of currency besides the government's currency, there's a tangible thing backing that unit.

Crypto still doesn't have that, and that matters. To what degree is up for debate, but it does matter. Only governments apparently can get away with the unbacked currency, because they otherwise back it with enforced societal rules (a.k.a. laws).

> No, that's not the same thing at all.

Per Mark Blyth

Money, to be useful is what Economists call three things; ♦ A Unit of Account ♦ A Unit of Exchange ♦ A Store of Value: A hedge against uncertainty Crypto is not money, so what is it? Is what the Chinese Central Bank characterized three years ago as Digital Gambling Asset

Since when does HN allow emoji!?

What other currencies are there in todays world other than fiat (government's currency back by nothing)? I was trying to think of something other than crypto and really came up blank.

Sure some corporations have things like CompanyX dollars that they could give out to employees who then redeem them for something. But in these situations those dollars are back by nothing.

Other things we're fed up of: people making up their own weird and arbitrary definitions of "currency".

Exactly how it works… but you left out the US Army part this time? You kind of need that to give it value. Nothing else will. USD.

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