This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Tuesday, July 16th, 2013.

I'm Caleb Brown.

Bitcoin is popular, but it bears repeating that its future is uncertain.

Jim Harper in the lead essay in this month's Cato Unbound discusses Bitcoin as money.

Harper stresses that many fans of Bitcoin probably need a refresher of what constitutes money.

I think it's important to start at the beginning with what money is and how it works.

A lot of people and it's kind of surprising don't really know what money is and how it works.

We have bills in our pockets, we use credit cards and other payment methods, but how is that transferring value?

Historically, and I'll be very general about it,

money was whatever commodity was fairly near at hand,

fairly commonly desired or wanted, and easy to transfer.

So in various examples in primordial societies might be seashells.

In other societies it was cows or other hoofed animals

and just about anything can be money.

There are a variety of qualities that something has to have to be money

that is it has to be transferable.

It helps to have standardized units.

It helps for the character of it to be fixed and unchangeable, resistant to counterfeiting, easy to store, high value,

compared to weight or volume, all these things are dimensions of the qualities of money.

And in a naturally occurring society without any interference, any kind of thing could be money. But historically we saw that precious metals became the most popular forms of money,

gold and silver.

And in varied ways, governments and rulers took over the role of establishing money.

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