Burak Arikan
@arikan
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Came to Buenos Aires for Avalanche Summit and blockchain tech, stayed for the nature and history, connecting colonialism to central banking.
Flew over Rio de la Plata to the stunning Iguazu. Mucho mariposa! 🦋🌳🌊
On the way, I learned how, in the 16th and 17th centuries, Spain’s extraction of silver and gold from Latin America, exploiting native labor, expanded state credit. Genoese bankers lent money to monarchs against future metal shipments. This evolved into systems where government debt was structured as tradable assets, leading to bond markets, early public debt management, and central banking functions like government debt and currency management. 0 reply
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5,000 years ago in Mesopotamia, you could deposit your grain in a secure storage facility and receive a grain token, while I could do the same with my wine. Then, we would simply exchange these tokens, which could be redeemed for the actual goods in storage, settling our debt. This is how money worked in Sumerian towns as they began trading their agricultural surplus, initially using clay tokens for counting, then for accounting, and eventually for administration.
These clay tokens were stored in clay envelopes for safekeeping. The contents of the envelope were recorded on clay tablets before sealing. This practice was, in fact, an early form of double-entry bookkeeping.
Credit money, based on trust between community members or a network of traders, has been widely used for centuries in forms such as vouchers, notes, and bills of exchange. Whereas, outside of the community, when trading with strangers, a different form of money was necessary.
Read more👇
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