Topic: First biological theory of money supports Bitcoin (Read 392 times)

“Really, what is money?” https://link.medium.com/hSshrD0hJZ

This is because you assume that biology has nothing to do with reality, which couldn't be further from the truth. Human societies are animal societies. You can keep understanding 'money' in the usual cultural way, but I wouldn't call that very empirical.

Well, the connection is the currency, both of them are used as currency, one is old system and is being used by government has power over its people while the second is new and digital which gives freedom to lots of people to have control over their own personal finances.

The advantage of bitcoin being used as currency that I see is part form the freedom to individually operate our own transactions anonymously, it also serve as a digital assets for store of value which increase as the system appreciate while fiat does not, but rather is a fixed assets that is not that flexible and does not appreciate. Although satoshi came with the idea of bitcoin to supplement money, but I think that it has the power and all the technology to really replace money in future.

Indeed, all forms of currency created are actually connected with fiat because fiat itself is a base currency. Even bitcoin has a very high value because of fiat, if fiat doesn't exist, then where can bitcoin be pegged to? Well that's about concept. And true, that general nature of bitcoin is certainly not far from fiat,  only difference is that it adopts a technology.

The article is actually against the 'selfish gene' mantra, which is nearly 50 years old and has been superseded by more realistic, non-moralistic theories about cooperation. Please read before you comment.

I think bitcoin is still connected with fiat money and there are many more that are still hidden inside without you knowing. just understand the general nature of bitcoin so you don't get complicated. 

I think this selfish Gene is somehow essential till and extent since it is the one that actually helps the world running , ofc too much of this is  a problem for sure.
This is actually derived from the *survival instinct*
If you are selfless you tend to be easily killed and you know other things .

There is a Gene for everything , even for our habit of moving legs without any stimuli .

Guys, it seems to me that everything happens and happens much easier and there is no need to appeal to high matter, as speculators manipulate the cryptocurrency market today, and Fiat is supported by states, because their economy depends on it.

Oh, I am pretty sure most of them will disagree. They also disagree about Bitcoin having value... What this paper does is bring actual scientists into the debate rather than leave it to social theorists.


Have you read the paper? It says that cooperation is not the same thing as altruism. That is, it rejects the selfish gene paradigm (as a lot of biologists are doing recently).

It is already in our nature and our mind mate,  and there is nothing we can do about it, and that is why religious leaders are trying their possible best to make sure the level of those characteristics that you mentioned are being limited because if not, the world would have been in a chaos and worst that the way you see it now.

Many people would have also been researching on this also, and you know why people go to school of theology, is to also learn how to talk human being out of these character that has turned them to evil because of the love of money. I don’t think it has anything with gene, it is just the mindset, because if it was with gene, it would have been impossible for people to be talked out of it, then get a medical treatment for it probably.

Not too sure it really is as close to solving the debate and I'm not sure either of the guys backing Modern Money Theory or Austrian School theory (this link in case anyone wants in) would agree this lays their case(s) to rest!

Interesting read, nevertheless. But there's also a lot of fresh conflicting evidence against the selfish gene (@dothebeats for e.g. more evidence shows we're not as instinctively anti-altruist as we think, as a recent Swedish study of public CCTV footage shows), suggesting that modern generations using modern money might actually not fit the logical mould anymore.

But it is not efficient as a store of value and would take a long time before people massively adopt it as such. Majority do not want to be responsible for their assets, they want to have a place they can go to, should something go wrong. And others believe you have to be 'techy' to get into bitcoins.

As a payment tool, it is a lot more efficient. Quick transfers which are anonymous and immutable. But it is still held back by adoption as only few real life stores accept bitcoins as a payment option.

I don't understand why people don't look bitcoin more likely a different payment method. In reality bitcoin's value is in USD, it's not independent, there is nothing that has fixed price in bitcoin but on another hand it really shows promises as a payment method. Convert USD into bitcoin and oh, anonymous transactions, offline wallet, whole online comfort. Bitcoin is something that gives you possibility to store money in virtual world like you store it in real life.

'The tendency to confuse cooperation with altruism needs to be overcome if morality and money are to be understood scientifically. When someone exchanges a coffee for something else, they are not actually being altruistic but cooperative. Any associated feelings of altruism belong in the moral, symbolic context of a society, not in the real context of trade. Thus, a token issued for rewarding altruistic actions (credit) cannot be logically called the same as a token wanted by people who are voluntarily looking to cooperate. The former kind of token follows the actions, whereas the latter precedes them.

Any system of exchange that relies on credit is vulnerable to deception and exploitation. Because altruistic actions are morally prescribed, there is a clear demand for credit, but also a clear incentive to issue it. In order to increase trust in the system, credit is often given a monetary basis that adds to the conceptual confusion of money with credit. It is generally hard to adopt an objective perspective on these concepts, away from what is commonly called ‘society’ and from the fact that language itself is sociocentric [23]. Phenomena such as kinship, modality and morality are all linguistic in nature and epistemically confusing [8, 24]. Financial discourse is equally shrouded in mystery, and now faces the challenge of technologies that disrupt the domestic setting in which it evolved.  

The term cryptocurrency inherits such ambiguities. The word currency refers to a medium of exchange issued within a legal context (from Middle English: curraunt, ‘in circulation’). But Bitcoin is not a currency because it exists de facto in the lawlessness of the internet, nor does cryptography alone provide its monetary qualities. Instead, bitcoins should be termed digital money, in the same way as many commodities and collectibles (e.g. precious metals, cigarettes in prison, salt in ancient times, wampum and other shells) are seen as tangible money.

Human societies endure on the basis of abstract beliefs and kinship systems that recruit cooperative partners. Credit has fuelled their exponential, competitive growth at the expense of the sustainable, intelligent growth that results from money alone. Morality and credit are fictional forms of value that concern only a subset of the species. On the other hand, money is ethical, because as a real form of value, it enables all human beings to cooperate regardless of where they were born.'

https://www.academia.edu/40138316/Money_is_a_token_of_cooperation_The_biology_of_indirect_exchanges

please note that I am not a biologist but, we believe that there are certain genes that control our greed, selfishness, and desire for money and power which have been the cause of war since the beginning of human civilization. there is no harm if one day there are people who are interested in taking part in research on this matter. Thank you for your enthusiasm

Money will remain as long as it has a purpose as money. What many people debate is a new concept of money known as digital money. Digital money itself is another form previous money and digital money has another concept than previous money, but digital money has same goal as money in general.

Well this increasingly heated dispute must be resolved immediately, because inevitably government or community must accept new money. Because it is a condition for advancing to more modern times.

It doesn't look like a good idea to draw in God here

Anyway, science explains the concept of money pretty well and coherent, so there definitely is an accepted definition as well as understanding of money among mainstream economists. And it is not the concept of money itself which gives rise to many debates (as I said, the concept is well-established). It is things like forms of money, their impacts on society, ways of creating new money and so on that are a matter of heated disputes

The theories of money you mention cannot be great because 1) they contradict each other, and 2) they do not communicate with biology.

As I mentioned, this theory explains the debate between David Graeber's anthropological narrative on the origins of money (book: Debt: The first 5000 years) and the classical economic narrative that money originated through barter.

Saying that the concept of money is 'widely accepted' is like saying the same about the concept of God. Yes, people use it with confidence but they don't know what it is or mean different things by it. Science has always served to clear this sort of cultural mysticism; it has done so with God and will do so with money.

Cryptocurrency is an ambiguous term because 1) the word 'currency' means a medium of exchange within a country or other normative context (from Middle English: curraunt, 'in circulation'), and 2) you can use cryptography for anything you like, including credit 'money' that is nothing like Bitcoin.
Bitcoin is not a currency because it exists in the lawlessness of the internet, nor does cryptography alone provide its monetary qualities (as I explained in the excerpt above).

So, we are left with the word money, which can refer to commodities and collectibles that are not associated with any authority (e.g. precious metals, cigarettes, wampum), or, again, to currency or credit. Clearly, if we want to understand these things, the meaning of the words must be sorted. The article proposes that we reserve the word money for commodities and collectibles (Bitcoin is a digital collectible); and it does so on the basis of the biological study of sociality and exchanges.

I really recommend you read the article. You will learn about modern debates in biology, the history and psychology of money, the nature of human societies, etc.

I guess Cryptocurrency is digital currency. Fiat currency exist in digital form too, so it definitely qualifies as digital currency...maybe it should be considered partly digital.
Some websites tend to define digital currency as currency that exist purely in digital form. I wonder why this is so.