Has anyone else read the recent article in Wired Magazine entitled “The Future of Money?” It was actually the cover story, so I flipped it open eagerly. It was about PayPal, and new forthcoming innovations such as payment-through-twitter, and other schemes for cutting out the middlemen of credit. It mentions the fringes of monetary extremism (i.e. the desire to prevent government intervention in money) but makes no mention of sound money. I expected more discussion of other online currencies, such as eGold (which is still under Fed seizure I believe) and other DGC’s (digital gold currencies.
They also include a sidebar of the history of money, that runs as follows: 9000BC - Cows, “The rise of agriculture made commodities like cattle and grain ideal proto-currencies: Since everyone knew what a heifer or a bushel was worth, the system was more efficient than barter”; 1200BC - Shells, “Rare or exotic shells, whale teeth, and metals were used for trade…due to great symbolic value…”; 640BC - Coins, Lydian Invention; AD800 - Paper currencies (admittedly used by the government, I was impressed to note) and so on. It may or may not be flawed, in terms of the talk of barter and whatnot, but I’m no expert.
The problems I see with PayPal, are that it is still denominated in dollars, and that there is no way to keep the government out of it, as there is with gold and silver.
Thoughts?