I'll Trade My Stone for your Daughter

I’ll trade my stone for your daughter, and I’ll keep your daughter and the stone at my house. This sounds like a line from a fantasy story, but it may also have been an ancient conversation on the island of Yap, a real Micronesian Island.

But why does the first trader get to acquire the daughter and keep the stone too? The trade hardly seems fair. The reason is that the archaic donut shaped rai stones the Yapese used for currency were often so large they were difficult to move. One stone coin could be larger and heavier than several people, so once they were placed somewhere, they usually stayed put. The owner of the stone money was known by word of mouth within the community. Everyone knew who owned each stone. Not all the coins were colossal, however. They ranged in size from something you could hold in your hand to gigantic wheel like statues that the villagers stood upright.

When the villagers did have to move a stone, the hole in the middle was used to thread long sticks or trees through so several villagers at once could lift it. All stones were placed in public view and were often lined up along pathways or put in central locations.

The Yapese villagers made the coins out of limestone they found on the nearby island of Palau. This meant they had to bring the coins back to Yap by boat. Because of the immense weight of some of the stones, the journey over the sea was perilous. It was truly a feat of skill and courage to transport a large stone by boat. Lives could be lost. The more perilous the endeavor, the greater the stone’s value. The largest coins were reserved for important matters like weddings and politics. It’s said that the Yapese people agreed that even sunken coins retained their value.

It may sound strange at first that giant donut shaped stones could buy things or favor, but here in the United States, we once used a stone of our own for currency—gold. The gold standard began in England in 1816 and lasted until 1930. During this time banknotes (paper money) represented actual gold. Prior to this, paper money had been used, but suffered inflation. The United States followed a gold standard after passing the Gold Standard Act in 1900. It lasted until around 1930.

What makes a currency work isn’t what it’s made of but rather that the people using it believe in its worth.

For example, other past forms of currency include cattle, livestock, grain, and plants. Small mollusk shells called cowrie were also used starting around 1200 B.C. in China and in Africa. Cowrie were used as currency for a very long time. Can you imagine buying a shirt with a handful of pretty shells?

Further, there was a time that China made leather money out of square patches of deerskin. Sounds a lot like durable paper money to me.

Where does all this leave digital currency, which is neither paper, rock, nor shell and has no physical shape at all? It certainly has value; just one Bitcoin is valued at $55,325.00 as of March 11, 2021. I’ll bet that back in the day, one of those large rai coins was about the same worth as a Bitcoin. Plus, the two currencies have some commonalities. Both rely on an open, public, community ledger system rather than a centralized banking system like we’re accustomed to here in the United States.

Given our long affinity for using rocks, shells, and paper for money, if cryptocurrency becomes the money of the future, I think a virtual shape would serve to forward its rise. Perhaps the perfect virtual model would be similar to the Yapese rai stones.