Money & Economic Foundations
Your money is already digital. It just isn't yours.
The balance on your screen isn't a pile of notes in a vault with your name on it. It's an entry in a database — and a claim on the bank that keeps it.
The problem
Hand over cash, then send the same amount.
Both move value from you to them. Count what sits in between.
Same payment, two routes
💵 Cash, in person
📱 Digital, by transfer
Press send and watch both routes run.
None of those intermediaries is a flaw — they're what makes digital payment fast, regulated and reversible. But each one is a party that can check, delay, block or reverse the transfer. With cash there is nobody in between at all. That difference isn't about technology; it's about who has to be involved.
The definition
Three things that surprise people.
Tap each card for what's actually going on.
Hands on
Break something and see who's affected.
Pick an event. Watch how each form of money copes.
Neither column is "better" — they fail differently, and that's the useful part.
The bridge
Four questions that lead into crypto.
Money is already information. So the interesting question stopped being "physical or digital?".
Cryptocurrencies didn't appear because money needed to become digital — it already was. The actual proposal was digital ownership and payment without classic central account-keeping: distributed networks and cryptography in place of a bank's database. That's where Section 2 begins.
Check yourself
Five questions.
Answers come straight from this lesson. Submitting completes it.