One time, according to the island's oral tradition, a work crew was bringing was bringing a giant stone coin back to Yap on a boat. And just before they got back to the island, they hit a big storm. The stone wound up on the bottom of the ocean.
The crew made it back to the island and told everybody what happened. And everybody decided that the piece of stone money was still good — even though it was on the bottom of the ocean.
"So somebody today owns this piece of stone money, even though nobody's seen it for over 100 years or more," Fitzgerald says.
This system, in the end, feels really familiar. If you go online to pay your electric bill, what's really changing in the world?
Some digits in your bank account get shifted around, along with some digits in the power company's bank account.
In other words, that stone money on the bottom of the ocean that you used to own now belongs to the power company.
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