Matšeliso Thabane, Interledger Foundation

Money is a shared fiction based on relationships and trust. According to Money, a book by Jacob Goldstein, the earliest pre-money economies were based on tribute. Providing goods as gifts built status through reciprocity; some tribute items became early examples of money. For example, pig tusks were so highly regarded as wedding gifts in the South-Pacific island nation of Vanuatu that it led to monopolistic practices and even violence. Even before the world had money, it was fighting over it.

Yet pig tusks meant nothing if a group couldn’t agree on their value. This consensus is the story of all money, an abstract creation based on a shared perception of value. Problems emerge when you create gaps between financial systems and those who trust them. There’s a trust problem in the finance world. According to the paper Trust in Banks, Financial Inclusion and the Mediating Role of Borrower Discouragement, 1.7 billion adults don’t have bank accounts, a fifth of them mentioning distrust in the financial system as the primary disincentive against holding bank accounts.