Money

The point I want to make with these two examples is that there's nothing inherently valuable about a dollar or a stone or a coin. The only reason these things have any value is because we've all decided they should. And because we've decided that, they do. Money is about the exchanges and the transactions that we have with each other. Money isn't anything objective. It's about a collective story that we tell each other about value. A collective fiction. And that's a really powerful concept.

In the past two decades, we've begun to use digital money. So I get paid via direct deposit, I pay my rent via bank transfer, I pay my taxes online. And every month, a small amount of money is deducted from my paycheck and invested in mutual funds in my retirement account. All of these interactions 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 in seconds.

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." If I'm a PayPal merchant and PayPal wrongly flags me for fraud, that's it. My account gets frozen, and I can't get paid.

We're about to enter a new phase of money. (Estamos a punto de entrar en...)

Cryptocurrencies are the first step of this evolution. Cryptocurrencies are digital money that isn't run by any government or bank. It's money designed to work in a world without intermediaries. Bitcoin is the most ubiquitous cryptocurrency, but there are hundreds of them. And these things are real money.

So what the banks used to give us -- trustworthy digital money transfer -- we can now get with a clever application of cryptography. And this means that we don't have to rely on the banks anymore to secure our transactions. We can do it ourselves.

MONEY. Vocabulary:

Invest money in / spend money on

Be in credit / be overdrawn (al descubierto)

Get into debt / get out of debt

Buy-get something on credit / pay cash for something

Get a loan / repay a loan (a la persona),

Pay back (devolver a alguien el dinero prestado) / pay off (devolverlo al banco)

 Have a good credit rating (calificación de crédito) / have a bad credit rating

Take out (contratar un préstamo, arrange to get a loan, morgage…) from a bank

Get high interest rate (tasa de interés) / get a low interest rate

Have a current account / have a saving account

Be well off / be short (of money). We also can say: be in debt

Take-get money out of an account / put money into an account

 Más formal para sacar o meter dinero: withdraw / deposit

Go down: caer. Price have gone down

Come to (ascender, precio total): The house repair come to about 1200 euros

Put down on (rebajar, dar una entrada o adelanto): He’s put 2.000 euros down on a new flat

 Come into (heredar): She came into a lot of  money when her aunt died 

Take off (rebajar): The shop took off 50 euros off the table because it was damaged 

Save up (ahorrar) Rip off (timar): $8 for an ice cream? He’s ripping people off. 

A deposite

To be rolling in Money

To be broke: estar en bancarrota = be out of money

To be bankrupt: ser insolvente. Bankruptcy: quiebra, bancarrota

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