Lyn Aldens new book 'Broken Money' opened my eyes to the invention of the telegraph being a major part of monetary history.

It seems that there were four main systems of money or four main epochs of money in human history.The first was ledger transmission, where people kept a mental record of who owed what to whom, or a ledger carved into a cave wall was updated to represent who owes what to whom within a tribe, or a rai stone's ownership was transferred without it moving. This was a system of recording who owes what to whom using a record of account usually overseen by an entire tribe. This has been used since humans could communicate roughly 50,000 years ago.The second was physical transmission. By this point tribes and trade had become too vast for one record in one location, so humans adopted commodity money where the most saleable good was used as money, over time gold became the one constant everyone on earth could agree on. This has been used since roughly 5,000 years ago.The third was message transmission. The telegrapgh was invented in 1837 and allowed humanity to communicate instantly over distance for the first time in history. This allowed for stored gold ownership to be transfered by telegraph with physical settlement taking place later on. This evolved into the SWIFT system we use today where SWIFT is the financial messaging system that banks use to conduct transactions before they settle between each other later on. This has been used for the last 180 years roughly.The fourth is bitcoin transmission. This type of monetary system combines the best of all three of the prior systems. It is a ledger that everyone on earth can see, audit and authenticate. It is a digital commodity that has a much more sound stock-to-flow ratio than gold. And it is a messaging system that can transmit and settle in real time instantly from any point on earth to any other point of earth.Bitcoin is the ultimate monetary system. It is the best part of every single system of money humans have ever used for the last 50,000 years.Bitcoin is the culmination of 50,000 years of monetary evolution.A change in the way we use money this drastic happens only once every 500 to 5,000 years.When humans moved from ledgers to gold as money massive wealth was made by gold prospectors during that transition. When humans moved from gold to messaging as money massive wealth was made by banks during that transition. Now as humans move from banks to bitcoin as money massive wealth will be made by us. via /r/Bitcoin https://bit.ly/46KzyAl