It's 2020. Met a man walked into one of very few shops still operating. He needed basic foodstuffs and shoes. He'd walked many miles. Gas stations were down. As were all supermarkets. Online systems and electricity power supplies were down. So most businesses were unable to process payments. Trade and supply systems had come to a halt.
He ran out of gas for his SUV. Had to leave it by the side of the road with other abandoned vehicles. He hiked on toward where he thought he might buy essential supplies. Others were doing the same. But many had problems walking. More people than usual were on bicycles. The few cars still moving were chock full of passengers and luggage. And they too would very likely come to a halt eventually.
Payment systems had begun to break down a year or so previously. It had begun with a collapse in the US$. Then many businesses stopped trading altogether, because they'd come to depend on electronic payment systems in terms of US$. Riots and social chaos were the result.
Met a man walked into a small store in a small town which still had some food and supplies for sale. He thought he got lucky. He thought he was wise. He had cryptocurrencies stored on the iphone he carried, not wortheless US$. He filled a basket with stuff he needed from the store. Then went to pay for it. He noticed the store owner, an elderly man, had a shotgun and rifle behind the counter.
He pulled out his iphone to pay. The owner went for his shotgun.
"No, no, don't worry. This is only my iphone. I'll pay for these things in any number of cryptocurrencies I have stored here." He said.
"Only take gold, or silver." The shop owner snapped back. "If you got something else of value, I may take that in exchange. But cryptos... what in hell am I gonna do with that when most of the internet and electricity power is down? People around here never trusted cryptos. We prefer real stuff. Like gold, silver, gasoline if you've got any, guns or ammo will also do it for you."
The man tried to persuade the shop owner to take his crypto codes as payment. But he got nowhere. He had to leave when he saw the owner fingering his shotgun.
So I met a man out on the street in a daze. He'd sunk most of his financial assets into cryptocurrencies when he saw the US$ was getting tra$hed. But what exactly was IT that he'd bought? - computer codes, digital script, that needed computer processing and preferably an operating internet. He saw the rug was pulled out from under the system when IT all came down. Even those with their own solar electricity supplies and operating computer systems would not accept cryptos outside of their own firewalls.
Met a man at the end of his daze. He'd pondered long in his dire shituation. What was "money"? Long ago it'd been real stuff like gold, silver, precious stones that most people valued and accepted in exchange for other things.
The Chinese were the first to come up with paper scrip. That's an amazing thing when one thinks about it. Why would people accept symbols and images printed on paper in exchange even for things like gold? It obviously only works when a system is in place that people believe in. When that system, or government, collapses so does its paper-scrip "money", which is only like a promise to pay. And the promise is worthless when the state that made it no longer exists. Old Chinese paper money may have value as collectors' items. But it's not acceptable as money by most people these days.
Then modern systems, after 1973, went a stage further into monetary insanity. Their banks began using digital money. By 2000, most money was not even paper, but digital blips in computer systems. The System coerced people away from metal and paper money towards using plastic cards and paying with digital money. Money was becoming more ephemeral - from metal to paper to electronic digits to cryptocurrencies that were entirely based on computer systems, electronic circuits.
Now The System is down, its paper and digital symbolic money is worthless. Met a man had believed a lie, a scam, which had benefited some for a time, but was now revealed to have been a scam. IT was a deeply embedded, cryptic scam for sure. Many people could not see IT until they had to. And then it was too late.
People in older civilizations seemed to have more understanding. Chinese and Indians have instinctual knowledge that state- or bank-issued paper money isn't as trustworthy as gold or silver. And will they accept digital money? Gold and silver are the go-to money that most Asians run to in times of crisis, and generally. It seems most Western people have not learned this lesson yet.