SOB: New Lessons From the Island of Stone Bitcoins
CoinDesk Podcast Network
CoinDesk
4.8 • 689 Ratings
🗓️ 28 March 2022
⏱️ 14 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Revisiting the story of Yap and Rai stone money yields surprising new insights about bitcoin today.
This episode is sponsored by Nexo.io and Wrejects.com.
In this visit to one of the earliest pre-bitcoin examples of a very bitcoin-like technology, correspondent George Frankly learns some valuable lessons about where convenience, belief and control collide.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This episode of Speaking of Bitcoin on the CoinDesk Podcast Network is brought to you by nexo.io and rejects Galactic Wrestling. |
| 0:12.3 | Hey folks, on this episode of Speaking of Bitcoin, we're handing over the mic to correspondent George Franklin as we revisit one of the earliest examples of Bitcoin-like technology far before |
| 0:22.0 | it was technology with some new lessons. |
| 0:25.5 | Hello there, I'm George Franklin, and I'm going to take a look at how even the best and brightest |
| 0:29.7 | people can make truly stupid decisions and terrible predictions, and what we can learn from them. |
| 0:34.8 | This is Dare to Be Stupid. At least, this is usually |
| 0:38.3 | dare to be stupid. Sometimes making bad decisions isn't a product of anyone being willfully |
| 0:42.7 | stupid or obtuse. Sometimes something forces your hand, and you have to play by somebody else's |
| 0:47.3 | rules. I'm getting ahead of myself. I'd actually like to talk about a bit of ancient history, |
| 0:52.3 | my first produced audio content |
| 0:54.2 | for the artists formerly known as Let's Talk Bitcoin. |
| 0:57.7 | About ten years ago, I did an edutainment piece about the island of stone money. |
| 1:01.9 | The giant stone coins of Yap happen to be a potent allegory and teaching tool for the basic |
| 1:05.8 | premise of decentralized currency. |
| 1:08.0 | And I'm going to strain my arm a little patting myself on the back. |
| 1:10.7 | I hit the stone bitcoins hot take a good six years before it became the go-to filler story |
| 1:15.4 | for every pop science feed. So, go me. Except, I think I missed some things. And in light of the |
| 1:21.7 | modern state of things, I think the story carries a few more lessons than I originally saw. |
| 1:26.1 | So, please, come with me as I return to the |
| 1:29.1 | island of stone bitcoins. Let's reintroduce the setting of the story. Out in the Pacific Ocean, |
| 1:34.9 | in what's now known as Micronesia, lies the Yap Islands. This small chain of inhabited |
| 1:39.2 | islands has become infamous for a unique twist in their cultural history. It's... |
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