Really great and easy to understand slideshow about the history of currencies and how they work all in relation to how Bitcoin fits into the worlds current monetary systems / problems!
Its accounting of the origin of money is totally devoid of historical fact or perspective. That can't be stated strongly enough: people who are interested in empirical findings instead of ideology have looked into the origin of money. This has been an area of research for at least a century, and there's not a bit of evidence that money developed as the slideshow claims.
There is a lot of both current and historical evidence to suggest that currencies can form in a decentralized manner. The fact that there was a long-standing decentralized gold standard in China is highly documented and written about. We can debate about the earliest origins, but that is not my intention. What we arrived at is the system I am describing, which is not a system that is chosen by a government or an ideology, but the one that is chosen organically by freely thinking individuals. There is a nature and a pattern to it, and I am trying to understand and describe that.
Quick thought experiment for you: if Bitcoin exchanges were to disappear overnight, what would happen to Bitcoin?
It hasn't yet. Bitcoin is still in the barely anyone knows about it experimental stage; it hasn't come close to being successful yet.