What is Money (History of Money)
Money is anything a society agrees to accept as payment and as a way to store value over time.
In depth
Humans moved from bartering goods, to commodity money like gold and silver, to paper notes backed by governments, and finally to digital balances in bank databases. Each step made money easier to move but also more dependent on a trusted institution. Cryptocurrency is the latest step: digital money whose rules are enforced by software and maths instead of a central authority.
Why it matters
Understanding what money actually is makes it much easier to judge what crypto does differently — and what it does not.