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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;kaparthy, post: 1816844, member: 57463&quot;]2500 years ago, it would have been easy to say that you cannot eat gold or silver. They do not hold an edge, so they cannot be used to make manual tools. Wheat and cows, those are <b>real</b> money.&nbsp; </p><p><br /></p><p>1500 years later pounds-shilling-pence began as a virtual currency, a banker&#039;s abstraction to deal with the plethora of medieval coinages. </p><p><br /></p><p>Henry V (or IV?) of France created the <b>franc </b>as a unit of account, independent of the coin which bore the name. Francs could have any value and often sadly had no value, the 20F coin going from gold to aluminum in a generation, though the franc survived for another generation before the euro.</p><p><br /></p><p>I recently read an informal poll of young people, university mostly, here in the USA from India and other places. They are amazed at our cashless society. On the one hand, most places are still cash-based. On the other, in Africa, cellphone minutes are the new currency.</p><p><br /></p><p>Bitcoins is just another instantiation of virtual currency. Flooz and egold were earlier attempts.&nbsp; I think that an easy comparison is that the Wright Brothers&#039;s first flight was shorter than the actual length of a 747.&nbsp; Give it time.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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