Since you're a subscriber to this Bloomberg Podcast, we thought you'd be interested in a new

four episode podcast called Evolving Money.

Produced by Coinbase and Bloomberg Media Studios,

it explores some of the monetary system's biggest changes

over the centuries.

And today's companies that are making big bets that cryptocurrency could be money's next evolution.

You can subscribe wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts.

Here's a recent episode.

Last year I went to France on a climbing trip. Scaling mountains takes a toll of course, but I was prepared

for that. The unpleasant surprise was the experience of managing my money.

There was so much friction involved in converting and spending my US dollars in another country away from home.

Well frankly I could have started a small fire at the top of the mountain.

To change dollars into euros, well first you need to find a bank that's open.

Once you've done that you need to stand in line, pay a fee, and then try not to blanch when you see that usually highly

unfavorable exchange rate. If you use your credit card and an ATM, which you can of course, you pay an ATM user fee, plus a foreign transaction fee,

plus a service charge, depending on the card. And then there's that appalling exchange rate again.

Of course, I could have exchanged dollars for euros before I left, but then I'd have to weather the risk of taking a huge amount of cash with me to the airport and keeping it on my person as I navigated a foreign country.

So mostly I just paid for everything with my American credit card,

which worked fine and felt friction free, but just a glance at my statement showed it was

anything but. Fees are bounded on both ends of my transactions as if I've been taken a toll

road every time I threw down my plastic. That convenience came at a cost.

I don't begrudge paying someone who provides a service,

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