Money’s primary purpose has always been to be able to hold the value of the entire society, and not break.

Literally every other thing we associate with money, or feature we wish it would provide, is either meaningless or doesn’t work at all, unless it can achieve the above.

In fact, the variable ability to accomplish the first goal, is exactly what ultimately limits the size of the economic network.

It’s why cowhide only ever work in small, disparate networks. It’s why glass beads failed after the European and African continents were connected. It’s why gold is the only thing that ever became a globally spanning monetary base, because a gold bar lost 500 years ago is the EXACT SAME gold bar today.

Exchanging value doesn’t matter if it isn’t expected to carry it. Payment speeds mean nothing if the cost to undo the payment is trivial. Privacy is of no purpose if there is no trustworthy value to protect.

Before anything else, money is a tool to protect value at a scale that no other good can match. And it’s very possible that Bitcoin is the single greatest system for scaling that capacity. Because the bigger it gets, the BETTER it is at protecting the value stored in it. Rather than diminishing with size, it actually compounds.