What is Money? From the Beginning to Bitcoin

Duration 01:00:14

City University of New York

For the past decade, English Professor Frederick Kaufman has focused his attention on the fiction that is money. His unorthodox insights into the ways of Wall Street have resulted in magazine articles for publications ranging from Scientific American to Wired, to Foreign Policy to Harper’s, invitations to speak on numerous podcasts, as well as television appearances on NBC, Bloomberg, Fox Business Network, and Democracy Now! Kaufman teaches at the City University of New York’s Graduate School of Journalism, and has guest lectured on both sides of the Atlantic, including Harvard, Yale, Columbia, and an address to the General Assembly of the United Nations.

Overview

Money is not what it used to be. Our dollars and cents have come to share the financial universe with “aliens” that go by strange names, such as Bitcoin and Ethereum. The European and Chinese central banks are experimenting with digital currencies that would transform banking as we know it. Meme stocks with no underlying value wreak havoc on Wall Street. No doubt, we live in a moment when our most basic understandings of money are being challenged. In order to gain some perspective on what’s going on—and a sense of what to expect going forward—Professor Frederick Kaufman will explore the 40,000-year history of this fiction we all agree to believe, with an eye on the future of money. He will explain how the present state of affairs came to be, and how cryptocurrency may not be all that different from the beads and shells of primitive money.