1:	Trading Promises: The Evolution of Money
	being a fintech company and all, i believe it is only prudent that we be able to answer the question: what is bitcoin? what is cryptocurrency? how do these cryptocurrencies acquire and retain value? can i buy essential necessities with it? ultimately, can i live with bitcoin alone? i wont be answering those questions myself in this presentation, but i hope i can give enough insight as to what currency is so you may answer these questions yourself

2: so to start, have you ever wondered how money, a weird rectangular piece of dehydrated tree bark, made you sit in front of a computer for the better part of 9 hours a day, for the better part of a week, for the better part of a week (ad infinitum)?

3: so, what is money? to answer that, we first examine its characteristics. By knowing these characteristics beforehand, we gain insight as to how these characteristics became the driving force behind the evolution of money that we see today

4: Portability: money must be able to go where its owner goes and not be encumbered by it. A person need not haul herds of cows or mile long caravans to trade for sacks of grain or gallons of water

5: Divisibility: money must be able to exist in smaller fractions of itself while still retaining the value of the original as the sum of its parts, be that value derived from its weight, purity, perceived value, or whatever the case may be.

6: Durability/Storability: money must endure the rigors of its intended use without degradation in its value. It should not undergo change over sufficient time such that its intrinsic value changes (for better or worse)

7: Scarcity: money must be rare enough that its supply in the general circulation can easily be monitored, enabling maintainance of market values and prices of goods (remember supply and demand)

8: Legitimacy: money must be recognized as a valid token for exchanging goods and inherent value by all that wish to use it. we can trade in seashells for as long as we all agree that it holds value and that each of us trusts the value of every piece of seashell we possess. This also includes resistance to counterfeiting

9: now that we got the characteristics of money, we go on to its evolution (pic ni pikachu with dollars for a head evolving to raichu with btc for a head). In this presentation, you can notice the characteristics of money used in each era to fix problems the arise due to complexity, technology, and ingenuity

10-11: Prehistory
	small nomadic tribes in prehistory before money was invented engaged with making, doing, and growing things that they needed. communities that had need for keeping tabs of payments and receipts for values exchanged only needed simple tallies to do so. but as agriculture flourished resulting in excess supply of goods, the exchanges grew rapidly and the tally system in barter trades grew outdated. IOU notes became a natural solution to this problem. problem was, unless you knew the issuer personally, its hard to verify. The next step was to make use of generic IOU tokens. that way, they can freely trade with one another while also storing purchasing power for later use

12-13: Coins
	once people started using tokens such as wheat, shells, and whales teeth to facilitate trade, some flaws eventually popped up. barley was heavy to carry transport and eventually rots. whales teeth was hard to split into smaller parts, shells can be easily picked up on any beach. another problem was that having money gave you power and having power gave you access to more money (ad infinitum). Kings then made use of coins made of precious metals such as gold. soon enough, counterfeiting was invented, slimming down purity of gold used in each coin minted with cheaper metals

14-15: Paper
	with increasing values of goods being traded, more coins were required. carrying around bags of coins presented its own problems. early chinese people came up with the idea of storing coins back in the palace and trade using certificates with the emperors stamp to insure its validity, enabling long distance and overseas trading. the paper itself held no value, but people trusted that it was worth what it said it was worth and it could be traded for however much gold it represented, regardless if that gold actually existed in the palace. printing these certificates became commonplace so they attempted to affix the amount of certificates issued to the amount of gold in the palace. thus, the gold standard and primitive banking were invented

16-17: Banking
	in the pacific island of yap in 1000ad, they used rai stones instead of gold. these were huge boulders of rock. this allowed the village to have a universal currency whose production was controlled by the chief. this presented problems again so they traded effectively in promises instead of rai stones which were kept at home. as you can notice, theres a trend of reverting back to IOUs in place of tokens. decentralizing power of production of trading implements such as certificates or coins was problematic. if the amount in circulation exceeds the value it represented, the total value of the currency goes down driving the economy down as well

18-19: Inflation
	in the 16th century, spain brought home massive quantities of gold from the colonies. this should have resulted in the monarchy getting more money and thus, more power. what happened was that traders simply increased the prices for their goods. this is inflation in the simplest sense. if there is more supply of gold in circulation while the demand remains stable, the value of each gold coin decreases. in this scenario, people who had less gold will have had their purchasing power decreased, making them poor, while those who had debts or loans whose amount remained fixed by way of a signed IOU or certificate, actually benefitted from it because they would then have to effectively pay for the goods they acquired for less than what they loaned

20: Cryptocurrencies?
	Portability: YES (its digital so duh)
	Divisibility: DEPENDS (BTC protocal has 8 decimal places so its sufficiently and easily divisible)
	Durability: YES (its digital so duh)
	Scarcity: YES (BTC protocol controls the amount of production scaling with increased use)
	Legitimacy: KINDA (BTC is relatively widespread proven by its numerous exchange rates across different fiat currencies but not enough that i can buy siomai with it. yet.)
	as you can see, cryptocurrencies also have its flaws but it mainly stems from the lack of widespread use. more usage means more legitimacy and, by extension, increases its value

FAQ:
- Perceived value differs from actual value. Ex: it takes more than one peso to mint a one peso coin. Similarly, it costs less than a thousand pesos to print a one thousand peso bill
- how do these cryptocurrencies acquire and retain value?
	remember the 10000btc papa john's pizza back in may 22 2010? back then bitcoin was worth $0.003 per bitcoin, less than a cent. it was not as prevalent at the time, so demand was low. at the same time, supply was high. if youre not familiar with how mining incentives work in the bitcoin, it halves everytime a certain number of blocks got mined, starting from 50btc. this way, supply of btc's was controlled scaling with the demand. with more demand and more blocks getting mined, the incentive to mine got smaller along with lesser infusion of bts's in circulation, limiting supply. this balance creates a steady uptick in price of every bitcoin over time, with early adopters having advabtage.
- bank derived its name from storing coins along the slopes of rivers, allowing water to constantly rinse it, making it shine. this was the process of storing money back then, away from the palace in the event of a castle siege so they 	can just abandon the palace and still have their money
- IOU: "i owe you". used to denote that a person owed another person some value of commodity in goods and/or services
- Interests in loans are employed not only to for revenue but also to guard lenders against inflation, ensuring that the *value* of what they got in return is relatively the same *value* they lent out, even if the *amount* changes