The Meaning of Mackerel

Daniel Marovitzceo- buzzumi

Twitter- @marovdan

What IS money?

All of them…

Flavors of Cash

Practically there are two types of money:

Commodity money- Gold, rice, salt, cod, barley, shells

Fiat money- Money that has value by decree- not because of intrinsic worth

What is it really?

• Money is information– It records value– It stores value– It transfers value

Money is abstract and symbolic

It can have limitless meaning, limitless value, limitless power to compel action.

There are few symbols that are as extensible

Money is belief

If we have learned one thing in the financial crisis about money:

trust confidence emotion

Matter.

SIGNIFICANTLY

Emotion

How are humans different from other animals?

The distinguishing point…

Macaque monkeys barter grooming for sexual attention

Bees have a complex dance-based language

Wolves hunt with forethought, coordination, and military-style hierarchy

Chimps and Sea gulls use tools

The development of money

Essentially Human

Humans store the ability to live, die, buy, dream, travel, and experience in slips of meaningless paper….

And increasingly in completely dematerialized digital

01010101010101101010101011001010101010101010101001010101010101010101

Wisdom of the Ancients

The need to symbolize value and store the memory of credit is very old.

Standardized barley facilitated trading in Mesopotamia in 3000BC

On the Greek island of Aegina- silver coins were minted in 700 BC.

Federal Prison

Federal prisons of the USA US dollars- are banned In 2004 the US prison system banned

cigarettes. Cigarettes had been the currency of

the prison system for generations

NO cash……

NO Smokes…..

HOW do you trade?

Mackerel

Pouches of dead fish

It works like this…

Commodity money is complex…

Protein helps you build

Help you FIGHT

If you want to fight, eat

Price of toothpaste in “Macks”

Monday

Tuesday

Wednesd

ay

Thursday

Friday

Satu

rday

Sunday

Monday

Tuesday

0

2

4

6

8

10

12

Macks per tube

What are the lessons?

Trading is fundamentally human Creating symbols of value is ancient People use what they have- however

odd Trust and heart matter as much as

brain

Banks/Payments/eCommerce

People will pay with mobiles- they are what they have

An interconnected world makes the legacy infrastructure seem very legacy

The rise of remote, individual, temp labor has big implications for money

Traditional financial players must evolve……..or………

….clients will find their own mackerel….