The Money Perspective

The more I read about the topic of money, the more it made me really think about what money really means to different people. Money around the world can have a different meaning for everyone. Some people can say money as just pieces of paper instead of something that has value. Many people see money in a variety of different ways.

Money around the world to us can be seen as just a piece of paper with no value. Friedman states in the chapter “The Island of Stone Money,” that money of other countries often seem to us as worthless paper or metal. Money also has different value in other countries. Like a Euro is worth a bit more than a U.S. dollar. The opinion of money is different for everyone especially people from different countries. For example, if someone had spent their whole life in the United States and take a trip to a different country, they would have to convert their American dollars to something else. That new money that they get is going to mean something different for them than it would for someone that is from that country.

Bitcoin was a big way to make money. When you invest in bitcoin, you can eventually trade bitcoin for cash. It’s almost like taking jewelry into a pawn shop and exchanging that for cash. Bitcoin has sadly not gone well over the past few years. In an article titled “Bitcoin Has No Place in Your or Any Portfolio” by Jeff Reeves, he states that “Bitcoin is simply worth whatever a random person is willing to pay because profits rely on your ability to find someone more foolish than yourself who is willing to buy higher.” After reading through this article, it allowed me to come to the realization that bitcoin can be a bad investment and hard to make any kind of money from it. The bitcoin values, however, can be seen as different values to everyone. For example, someone could pay a lot more than someone else simply because they believe that it is worth more than what other people think.

One of the first countries to develop paper money was China. On the show Morning Edition, hosted by Noel King, he had Jacob Goldstein on to interview. Jacob Goldstein wrote a book called, Money: The True Story of a Made-Up Thing. They start off the show by talking about China and Money. China was the first country to ever make paper money. Before that, everyone used iron to pay for things and you’d have to carry around like a pound of iron. The Mogol emperor, Kublai Khan was the one that created the first paper money. Back then, there were a lot of different things people used to pay for things. For example, Gold and Silver was being used in the 1820’s in the United States. People can see many different things as value. China saw iron as having value and eventually evolved into seeing paper as having value.

The opinion of money is different for everyone around the world. Money value around the world is different like some countries use Euros, some use pounds and of course the United States uses U.S. Dollars. People from these countries see their money as being worth something compared to having money from another country. They could see that as a worthless piece of paper. It’s the same thing that happened in China. Other countries didn’t see paper as having any sort of value. Bitcoin is another example of the perspective of money. Some people see the investment they put into bitcoin as being worth something but other people may see it differently. Money is a great thing in this world but it can be interpreted differently all throughout the world.

References

Friedman, M. (1991). The Island Of Stone Money. Stanford, California: The Hoover Institution.

King, N., & Goldstein, J. (2020, September 08). What Is Money? Jacob Goldstein’s Book Explains ‘Shared Fiction’. Retrieved September 21, 2020, from https://www.npr.org/2020/09/08/910586930/what-is-money-jacob-goldsteins-book-explains-shared-fiction

Reeves, J. (2015, January 31). Bitcoin has no place in your – or any – portfolio. Retrieved September 21, 2020, from https://www.marketwatch.com/story/bitcoin-has-no-place-in-any-portfolio-2015-01-28