Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-t5tsf Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-10T14:19:06.622Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Bitcoin and stone money: Anglophone use of Yapese economic cultures, 1910-2020

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 November 2023

Jo Lindsay Walton
Jo Lindsay Walton*
Affiliation:
University of Sussex UK
*
Corresponding author: Jo Lindsay Walton, Sussex Humanities Lab, University of Sussex, Falmer, East Sussex, BN1 9RG, UK. Email: j.c.walton@sussex.ac.uk.
Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Core share and HTML view are not available for this content. However, as you have access to this content, a full PDF is available via the ‘Save PDF’ action button.

Recently parallels have been drawn between Bitcoin and Yapese stone money. This article focuses on Fitzpatrick and McKeon's (2019) exploration of similarities and differences. The analogy between Bitcoin and Yapese stone money is based on proposed commonalities that are inaccurate, ill-defined, and/or trivial. However, this does not signal a need to refine the comparison, but rather a need to reconsider the rationale for attempting it in the first place. Recent attempts to redefine Yapese stone money using terminology from the field of cryptocurrency reproduces a longer textual history in which writers from the Global North have misrepresented Yap for pedagogic or polemic convenience. Examples include works by William Furness III, John Maynard Keynes, Milton Friedman, and influential macroeconomics textbooks, such as N. Gregory Mankiw's Macroeconomics. This history features frequent colonialist tropes of Yap as well as the erasure of histories of colonial violence and power. More caution should be exercised in the study and pedagogic use of Yapese economic cultures, and greater effort should be made to center Yapese voices, acknowledge colonial contexts, and reflect positionality and uncertainty.

Keywords

Bitcoinblockchainmacroeconomicsmoneysocial currencyYap
Type
Article
Information
Finance and Society , Volume 8 , Issue 1 , 2022 , pp. 42 - 66
Creative Commons
Creative Common License - CCCreative Common License - BYCreative Common License - NCCreative Common License - ND
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivatives licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits noncommercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is unaltered and is properly cited. The written permission of Cambridge University Press must be obtained for commercial re-use or in order to create a derivative work.
Copyright
© 2022 The Author(s)

References

Alkire, W.H. (1980) Technical knowledge and the evolution of political systems in the central and Western Caroline Islands of Micronesia. Canadian Journal of Anthropology, 1(2): 229–37.Google Scholar
Amacher, R.C. (1983) Principles of Economics. 2nd edition. Cincinnati, OH: South-Western Pub. Co.Google Scholar
Ammous, S. (2018) The Bitcoin Standard: The Decentralized Alternative to Central Banking. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley.Google Scholar
Angell, N. (1929) The Story of Money. Garden City, NJ: Garden City Pub. Co.Google Scholar
Baumol, W.J. and Blinder, A.S. (1985) Economics: Principles and Policy. 3rd edition. San Diego, CA: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.Google Scholar
Baumol, W.J., Blinder, A.S. and Solow, J.L. (2020) Macroeconomics: Principles and Policy. 14th edition. Boston, MA: Cengage Learning.Google Scholar
Berentsen, A. and Schar, F. (2018) A short introduction to the world of cryptocurrencies. Review, 100(1): 1–16.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Born, L. (2000a) Funeral Obsequies on Yap (Western Carolines). New Haven, CT: Human Relations Area Files.Google Scholar
Born, L. (2000b) Some Remarks on the Music, Poetry and Dance of the People of Yap. New Haven, CT: Human Relations Area Files.Google Scholar
Brekke, J.K. (2021) Hacker-engineers and their economies: The political economy of decentralised networks and ‘cryptoeconomics’. New Political Economy, 26(4): 646–59.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brunton, F. (2019) Digital Cash: The Unknown History of the Anarchists, Utopians, and Technologists Who Built Cryptocurrency. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
De Beauclair, I. (1963) The stone money of Yap. Bulletin of the Institute of Ethnology, 16: 147–60.Google Scholar
Descantes, C. (2005) Integrating Archaeology and Ethnohistory: The Development of Exchange between Yap and Ulithi, Western Caroline Islands. Oxford: Archaeopress.Google Scholar
Dodd, N. (2018) The social life of Bitcoin. Theory, Culture & Society, 35(3): 35–56.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Egan, J. (1998) Taro, Fish, and Funerals: Transformations in the Yapese Culture. PhD thesis. University of California, Irvine.Google Scholar
Einzig, P. (1948) Primitive Money in its Ethnological, Historical and Economic Aspects. London: Eyre and Spottiswoode.Google Scholar
Fitzpatrick, S.M. (2003) Stones of the Butterfly: An Archaeological Investigation of Yapese Stone Money Quarries in Palau, Western Micronesia. PhD thesis, University of Oregon.Google Scholar
Fitzpatrick, S.M. (2004) Banking on stone money. Archaeology, 57(2).Google Scholar
Fitzpatrick, S.M. (2014) The archaeology of Western Micronesia. In: Cochrane, E.E. and Hunt, T.L. (eds.) The Oxford Handbook of Prehistoric Oceania. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 252–70.Google Scholar
Fitzpatrick, S.M. and McKeon, S. (2019) Banking on stone money: Ancient antecedents to Bitcoin. Economic Anthropology, 7(1): 7–21.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Frank, R.H. and Bernanke, B. (2001) Principles of Economics. Boston, MA: McGraw-Hill/Irwin.Google Scholar
Frank, R.H., Bernanke, B., Antonovics, K.L. and Heffetz, O. (2019) Principles of Economics. 7th edition. New York: McGraw Hill Education.Google Scholar
Furneaux, N. (2018) Investigating Cryptocurrencies: Understanding, Extracting, and Analyzing Blockchain Evidence. Indianapolis, IN: Wiley.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Furness, W.H. (1910) Island of Stone Money: Yap of the Carolines. London: J.B. Lippincott Company.Google Scholar
Gibson-Graham, J.K. (2007) A Postcapitalist Politics. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.Google Scholar
Gillilland, C.L.C. (1975) The Stone Money of Yap: A Numismatic Survey. City of Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press.Google Scholar
Global Times (2021) China to shut down over 90% of Its Bitcoin mining capacity after local bans. Global Times, 20 June.Google Scholar
Glumac, B. and Fitzpatrick, S.M. (2020) Yapese stone money: Local marble as a potential inspiration for producing limestone exchange valuables in Palau, Micronesia. In: Cooney, G., Gilhooly, B., Kelly, N. and Mallía-Guest, S. (eds.) Cultures of Stone: An Interdisciplinary Approach to the Materiality of Stone. Leiden: Sidestone Press, 65–78.Google Scholar
Golumbia, D. (2016) The Politics of Bitcoin: Software as Right-Wing Extremism. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.Google Scholar
Graeber, D. (2011) Debt: The First 5,000 Years. Brooklyn, NY: Melville House.Google Scholar
Guerrilla Media Collective, TNI, and DisCO.coop (2019) If I Only Had a Heart: A DisCO Manifesto. Available at: <https://disco.coop/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/DisCO_Manifesto-v.1.pdf>. Accessed October 2021..+Accessed+October+2021.>Google Scholar
Hage, P. and Harary, F. (2010) Island Networks Communication, Kinship, and Classification Structures in Oceania. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Haskin, B. (1954) His Majesty O'Keefe. Norma Productions. Available at: <play.google.com/store/movies/details/His_Majesty_O_Keefe>. Accessed October 2021.. Accessed October 2021.' href=https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Haskin,+B.+(1954)+His+Majesty+O'Keefe.+Norma+Productions.+Available+at:+.+Accessed+October+2021.>Google Scholar
Hazell, L.C., and Fitzpatrick, S.M. (2006) The maritime transport of prehistoric megaliths in Micronesia. Archaeology in Oceania, 41(1): 12–24.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Howson, P. (2020) Climate crises and crypto-colonialism: Conjuring value on the Blockchain frontiers of the Global South. Frontiers in Blockchain, 3(22): 1–6.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Huang, Y. (2021) Walking on the village paths: Kanaawoq in Yap and Rarahan in Yami. In: Fox, J.J. (e.d) Austronesian Paths and Journeys. Canberra: ANU Press, 303–36.Google Scholar
Humphrey, C. (1985) Barter and economic disintegration. Man, 20(1): 48–72.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hunt et al. (2000) The Micronesians of Yap and their Depopulation: Report of the Peabody Museum Expedition to Yap Island, Micronesia, 1947-1948. New Haven, CT: Human Relations Area Files.Google Scholar
Hunter-Anderson, R. and Zan, Y.G. (1996) Demystifying the Sawei, A traditional interisland exchange system. Isla: A Journal of Micronesian Studies, 4(1): 1–45.Google Scholar
Ingham, G.K. (2004) The Nature of Money. Cambridge: Polity.Google Scholar
Iwao, U. (1987) Political structure and formation of communication channels on Yap Island: A case study of the Fanif District. Senri Ethnological Studies, 21: 177–203.Google Scholar
Jevons, W.S. (1875) Money and the Mechanism of Exchange. New York: D. Appleton and Company.Google Scholar
Jutel, O. (2021) Blockchain imperialism in the Pacific. Big Data & Society, 8(1): 1–14.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Keynes, J.M. (1930) A Treatise on Money. New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company.Google Scholar
Klingman, L, and Green, G. (1950) His Majesty O'Keefe. New York: Scribner.Google Scholar
Krause, S. (2019) The 2014 Ngolog Mitmit: A case study examining public and private heritage in Yap State, FSM. Present Pasts, 9(1): 2–11.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Krause, S.M. (2015) The art of communication in Yap, FSM: Traditional forms of respectful interactions. In: Lee, S., Nabobo-Baba, U., Kinikini-Kauvaka, L.L. and Rehuher-Marugg, F.K. (eds) Traditional Knowledge and Wisdom: Themes from the Pacific Islands. ICHCAP, 46–59.Google Scholar
Labby, D. (1976) The Demystification of Yap: Dialectics of Culture on a Micronesian Island. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Lessa, W.A. (1950) The place of Ulithi in the Yap empire. Human Organization, 9(3): 1618.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lingenfelter, S.G. (1972) Political Leadership and Culture Change in Yap. PhD thesis, University of Pittsburgh.Google Scholar
Lingenfelter, S.G. (1991) In the court or in the village? Settling disputes in Yap: 1950-1979. The Journal of Pacific History, 26(1): 74–93.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Maiello, M. (2021) Researchers turn to stones to find the ancient origin of Bitcoin. Around the O, 28 January. Available at: <https://around.uoregon.edu/content/researchers-turn-stones-find-ancient-origin-bitcoin>. Accessed October 2021..+Accessed+October+2021.>Google Scholar
Mankiw, N.G. (2019) Macroeconomics. 10th edition. New York: Macmillan Learning.Google Scholar
Martin, F. (2014) Money: The Unauthorised Biography. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.Google Scholar
Mauss, M. (2004) The Gift: Form and Reason for Exchange in Archaic Societies. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Miles, D.D. and Scott, A. (2002) Macroeconomics: Understanding the Wealth of Nations. 1st edition. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley.Google Scholar
Moore, W.R. (1952) Grass-skirted Yap. National Geographic, 102(6): 805–30.Google Scholar
Morgan, A. (1996) Mystery in the eye of the beholder: Cross-cultural encounters on 19th-century Yap. The Journal of Pacific History, 31(1): 27–41.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Muldoon, J. (2022). Platform Socialism. London: Pluto.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Müller, W. (1918) Yap. Vol. 2. [2 vols. Ergebnisse Der Südsee-Expedition 1908-1910]. Hamburg: L. Friederichsen & Co.Google Scholar
Perkins, R.M. and Krause, S.M. (2018) Adapting to climate change impacts in Yap State, Federated States of Micronesia: The importance of environmental conditions and intangible cultural heritage. Island Studies Journal, 13(1): 65–78.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pettifor, A. (2018) The Production of Money: How to Break the Power of Bankers. London: Verso.Google Scholar
Pine, A. (1984) Fixed assets, or: Why a loan in Yap is hard to roll over - tiny Micronesian island uses giant stones as currency; don't forget your change. Wall Street Journal, 29 March.Google Scholar
Price, W. (1944) Japan's Islands of Mystery. New York: John Day Co.Google Scholar
Puiu, T. (2021) The surprising similarity between Bitcoin and ancient stone money from a pacific island. ZME Science, 11 October. Available at: <https://www.zmescience.com/science/news-science/bitcoin-stone-money-04234/> Accessed October 2021.+Accessed+October+2021.>Google Scholar
Rospabé, P. (1995) La Dette de Vie: Aux Origines de La Monnaie Sauvage. Paris: Découverte.Google Scholar
Ruffin, R. and Gregory, P.R. (1997) Principles of Macroeconomics. 6th edition. Reading, MA: Addison- Wesley.Google Scholar
Schneider, D.M. (2000) Yap Kinship Terminology and Kin Groups. New Haven, CT: HR Area Files.Google Scholar
Senfft, A. (2000) Ethnographic Contributions Concerning the Caroline Islands of Yap. New Haven, CT: Human Relations Area Files.Google Scholar
Sigalos, M. (2021) The IRS has seized $1.2 billion worth of cryptocurrency this fiscal year - here's what happens to it. CNBC, 4 August 2021. Available at: <https://www.cnbc.com/2021/08/04/irs-has-seized-1point2-billion-worth-of-cryptocurrency-this-year-.html>. Accessed October 2021.. Accessed October 2021.' href=https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Sigalos,+M.+(2021)+The+IRS+has+seized+$1.2+billion+worth+of+cryptocurrency+this+fiscal+year+-+here's+what+happens+to+it.+CNBC,+4+August+2021.+Available+at:+.+Accessed+October+2021.>Google Scholar
Smithsonian (2015) Yap Island's stone-cold cash. Available at: <https://smithsonianapa.org/recollections/rai/>. Accessed February 2022.. Accessed February 2022.' href=https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Smithsonian+(2015)+Yap+Island's+stone-cold+cash.+Available+at:+.+Accessed+February+2022.>Google Scholar
Rutun, E.M. (2022) Misconceptions and mistranslations: The language of traditional Yapese dances. In: Pangelinan, P.J.C. and McVey, T. (eds.) Advances in Higher Education and Professional Development. IGI Global, 103–17.Google Scholar
Stephenson, N. (1995) The Great Simoleon Caper. TIME, 1 March.Google Scholar
Takhteyev, Y. and Prado, M.M. (2014) Bitcoin goes boom. Foreign Affairs, 31 January. Available at: <https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/2014-01-30/bitcoin-goes-boom>. Accessed October 2021..+Accessed+October+2021.>Google Scholar
Taleb, N.N. (2021) Bitcoin, currencies, and fragility. Quantitative Finance, 21(8): 1249–55.Google Scholar
Tett, G. (2021) Bitcoin 1.0: The ancient stone money of Yap. Financial Times, 3 March. Available at: <https://www.ft.com/content/aa156703-49d8-4cc4-a740-b35d525a5417>. Accessed October 2021..+Accessed+October+2021.>Google Scholar
Tomlinson, B., Boberg, J., Cranefield, J. et al. (2021) Analyzing the sustainability of 28 ‘Blockchain for Good’ projects via affordances and constraints. Information Technology for Development, 27(3): 439–69.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Weidmann, J. (2020) On the future of money and payments. Available at: <https://www.bundesbank.de/en/press/speeches/on-the-future-of-money-and-payments-843720>. Accessed October 2021..+Accessed+October+2021.>Google Scholar
Williamson, S.D. (2005) Macroeconomics. Second edition. Boston, MA: Addison-Wesley.Google Scholar
Vidan, G., and Lehdonvirta, V. (2019) Mine the Gap: Bitcoin and the maintenance of trustlessness. New Media & Society, 21(1): 42–59.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Yanaihara, T. (1940) Pacific Islands under Japanese Mandate. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Yermack, D. (2015) Is Bitcoin a real currency? An economic appraisal. In: Chuen, D.L.K. (ed.) Handbook of Digital Currency. San Diego, CA: Academic Press, 31–43..CrossRefGoogle Scholar