Name: 【TED】Neha Narula: The future of money (The future of money | Neha Narula)
Uploaded: 2017-08-07T14:19:37.000Z
Duration: 16 min 17 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

I want to tell you about the future of money.

Let's start with a story about this culture

Participle clauses

that lived in Micronesia in the early 1900s, called the Yap.

because their form of money is really interesting.

They use these limestone discs called Rai stones.

Now, the Yap don't actually move these Rai stones around

or exchange them the way we do with our coins,

because Rai stones can get to be pretty massive.

The largest is about four tons and 12 feet across.

So the Yap just keep track of who owns part of what stone.

that were transporting a stone across the ocean

when they ran into some trouble and the stone actually fell in.

and they told everyone what had happened.

And everyone decided that, actually, yes,

the sailors had the stone and -- why not? -- it still counted.

Even though it was at the bottom of the ocean,

You might think that this was just a small culture

But things like this happen in the Western world as well,

and the Yap actually still use a form of these stones.

In 1932, the Bank of France asked the United States

to convert their holdings from dollars into gold.

But it was too inconvenient to think about actually shipping

So instead, someone went to where that gold was being stored

and they just labeled it as belonging to France now.

And everyone agreed that France owned the gold.

The point I want to make with these two examples

is that there's nothing inherently valuable

The only reason these things have any value

is because we've all decided they should.

Money is about the exchanges and the transactions

It's about a collective story that we tell each other about value.

a small amount of money is deducted from my paycheck

and invested in mutual funds in my retirement account.

are literally just changing 1's and 0's on computers.

There's not even anything physical, like a stone or a coin.

Digital money makes it so that I can pay someone around the world

it's because there are large institutions underwriting every 1 or 0

it's often the fault of those large institutions.

Or at least, it's up to them to fix the problem.

How long did it take the US credit card companies

Half my credit cards still don't work in Europe.

Transferring money across borders and across currencies

An entrepreneur in India can set up an online business in minutes,

but it's hard for her to get loans and to get paid:

Our access to digital money and our ability to freely transact

is being held captive by these gatekeepers.

And there's a lot of impediments in the system slowing things down.

That's because digital money isn't really mine,

it's entries in databases that belong to my bank,

my credit card company or my investment firm.

And these companies have the right to say "no."

My account gets frozen, and I can't get paid.

These institutions are standing in the way of innovation.

How many of you use Facebook photos, Google Photos,

They are on my phone, they're on my laptop,

they're on my old phone, they're in Dropbox.

They're on all these different websites and services.

And most of these services don't work together.

when institutions control the money supply.

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【TED】Neha Narula: The future of money (The future of money | Neha Narula)

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