I started off with "Pennies". It took me some time to grasp that a wider piggy bank was out there. Different denominations, other nation's coins, they were all just attractive, differently formed tokens, pennies, in my Penny Collection.
Not long after, I got it. I learned that the penny was our nation's quantum (it still had a quark at that time, two of them making one pence) and we had other multiples to jingle, then up even into super-multiples of undesirable wrinkled paper. I was unconcerned about ownership of the notes, they were unmusical, aesthetic failures that would not sit well in my little old cigar box of Phennigs, Centimes 'n' all.
Then I got a newspaper round and that delivered earning power. Paper became elemental to my world, fingers marked with ink from The Sun and heavy broadsheets, then at the end of the round, that unique feel of cash, used notes, there's still nothing like them, nothing like that feel. I think to this day, there's no greater form of money for many - it seems to be under threat though.
Proper work, a real job, got hold of me and the money became electronic, even back then in the 1980's. It was not something that was Held so much although most of what I earned was withdrawn from the bank and actually Felt before it was exchanged for records or drinks.
At that time, other currencies became apparant, less easily pinned down and quantified, but worthy of mention. Those of charisma, machismo, intimidation, sexual allure. Not directly monetary, but they earn and take their share any way they can - they might be responsible perhaps for the drive behind a huge proportion of the conventional currencies.
It didn't end there, cash retreated into the deepest of dark pockets as bank/debit card transactions took over. Then credit card flourishing replaced those, only to be paid when due at the end of the month, or later still at the cost of just a little interest.
The Pound was distant, I did not know how many of them I was paid, I did not know how many of them were taken from me by the tax people before I'd even seen them, not that I would ever see any of them. I did not know how many I'd spent. It just seemed, overall, over a period of a few months, that I was OK, about even, even accumulating. But it wasn't all that visible, all that clear whether I was in the red or in the clear, even back then, in the nineties.
After that, another world opened up to me, through the telephone and the early toddling of things called websites, it became possible to exchange those unfelt Pounds for share value in companies around the world and to swap for many different types of money from countries around the world. It felt like an obliteration of frontiers, I took advantage and found I could gain - and lose. The gains had greater buzz than the losses detracted, they hurt, but were easily undone by the thrill of a small gain.
Mother Nature provided things called CFDs, and similar, it was possible to do all the share and currency stuff upon slick websites, without awkward conversations with bank operatives who could potentially ask squirming questions - although they never did, quite happy to just take the money. With CFDs came leverage! Mechanical advantage applied to one's finances to amplify outcomes. It was possible to manipulate far greater sums than ever before, deploying just the deposits available to the smaller man. Losses May Outweigh Deposits - that's repeated and underlined, although in as inconspicuous a way as possible. But the buzz will also always outweigh the losses, when (if) it comes.
Then the internet truly blossomed and clever, socially inadequate, people created the unheard of. Gems of the coder's mind, sprinkled across a sparkling global web, with a promise of accepting our wealth and allowing it to grow - gradually. Blocks spanned nations, like Hadrian's Wall, providing security and impregnibility and a hiding place for those in the know
But, then, no! Time passed and a wider audience tasted the nectar, the new coins, the net-pennies, began to step up in value, doubling every month, every week, every day!!! It was unstoppable. It will be unstoppable. Smart, distributed code will execute in an omnipresent sense, judging and approving (or not) our actions and there will not be a damn thing we can do about it if we don't like it.
Swell, innit? The future is here and it's there, and it's over there as well. It might also be on a bit of paper I've got hidden in my loft and it might be safely stored on a website, or on an electronic sausage I have in a jam jar in my garden. Or it might not.
If I had the know how, I would ride that bandwagon too. Mine would be called BitchCoin. Sure to be a winner, it would be an anonymous payment method for prostitutes. Cryptographically uncrackable, it would be. Watch this e-space.