# At The Money: Paul Vigna Explains "What is Money?"

An episode of [Masters in Business](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/730188152), 6 Aug 2025, 17 min.

Audio: https://podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/traffic.omny.fm/d/clips/e73c998e-6e60-432f-8610-ae210140c5b1/4e4cd910-40a1-4619-a5f3-ae2b0012ffff/908a59a8-b7de-40ee-aab3-b33100ed1af3/audio.mp3?utm_source=Podcast&in_playlist=5873a3cb-298f-40bc-b71f-ae2b0013000d

Money. It's a driving factor in our lives. But how often have you thought about those little green pieces of paper in your wallet and the idea that created it, or the digital zeros and ones in our banks and brokerage accounts that represent your money? Is it real, or simply a collective delusion? Paul Vigna is a reporter for The Wall Street Journal, and has been a journalist for more than 25 years, as a reporter, editor, and photographer. He currently covers the cryptocurrency sector, including bitcoin, other digital currencies, and blockchain-related technologies. He is the author of “The Almightier: How Money Became God, Greed Became Virtue, and Debt Became Sin.” Each week, “At the Money” discusses an important topic in money management. From portfolio construction to taxes and cutting down on fees, join Barry Ritholtz to learn the best ways to put your money to work. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

## Transcript

[0:00] Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news.
[0:19] Speaker 2: Money it's a driving factor in our lives. But how
[0:23] Speaker 2: often have you thought about those little green pieces of
[0:26] Speaker 2: paper in your wallet and the idea that created it,
[0:31] Speaker 2: or the digital zeros and ones in our banks and
[0:33] Speaker 2: brokerage accounts that represent your money. Is it real or
[0:38] Speaker 2: is money simply a collective delusion. I'm Barry Ridoltson on
[0:43] Speaker 2: today's edition of At the Money. We're going to chat
[0:46] Speaker 2: about the concept of what exactly money is. To help
[0:51] Speaker 2: us unpack all of this and what it means to you.
[0:53] Speaker 2: Let's bring in Paul Vinya of The Wall Street Journal.
[0:56] Speaker 2: He's published numerous books on money, crypto. His latest book,
[1:01] Speaker 2: The Almightier How Money became God, greed became virtue, and
[1:06] Speaker 2: debt became Sin. It's out July twenty twenty five. So Paul,
[1:12] Speaker 2: let's start with the basics. You define money as a
[1:16] Speaker 2: belief system. Explain what that means, sure.
[1:20] Speaker 3: Briefly, So, I mean this is Look, this is something
[1:22] Speaker 3: that I never thought about for the majority of my life.
[1:26] Speaker 3: To me, money was just what was in my wallet,
[1:28] Speaker 3: what was in my bank account. I could use it,
[1:29] Speaker 3: I could buy things I didn't worry about what it was.
[1:33] Speaker 3: It wasn't important to me. That changed over the last
[1:37] Speaker 3: ten years or so and I started thinking to my
[1:39] Speaker 3: you know, sort of thinking about this question what is money?
[1:42] Speaker 3: And that sent me down this rabbit hole and where
[1:45] Speaker 3: I have, where I've come out on that is that
[1:48] Speaker 3: money is not a real thing. You hold money in
[1:52] Speaker 3: your hand, you hold paper dollars, your whole coins, and
[1:54] Speaker 3: you think it's real. You think that's money. That isn't money.
[1:57] Speaker 3: That's a thing that represents money, dollar, bills, coins, money
[2:02] Speaker 3: itself is It's a system. It's a system we made up.
[2:06] Speaker 3: It's a system human beings invented as a way to
[2:10] Speaker 3: help us keep track of resources of all our stuff.
[2:13] Speaker 3: You look at the point of a society, and really
[2:15] Speaker 3: the point of a large scale society is to get
[2:17] Speaker 3: a group of people together to combine their efforts and
[2:20] Speaker 3: their resources to take care of each other. The way
[2:24] Speaker 3: as societies got much larger and larger, they found an
[2:27] Speaker 3: efficient way to do that, and it was basically to
[2:30] Speaker 3: have everything represented by money. And then if you have money,
[2:33] Speaker 3: you have a claim on the group's resources. And what
[2:37] Speaker 3: has happened over the last five thousand years or so
[2:39] Speaker 3: is that we have mythologized money into this real thing,
[2:43] Speaker 3: and we have convinced ourselves, we have hypnotized ourselves into
[2:46] Speaker 3: believing that it is a real thing, to the point
[2:49] Speaker 3: where the pursuit of it on its own has taken
[2:53] Speaker 3: over most of what we think of as the point
[2:55] Speaker 3: of economics in society. But it's not a real thing,
[2:59] Speaker 3: is not a thing that exists on its own. It
[3:01] Speaker 3: is a thing that we created. It's a system that
[3:04] Speaker 3: we created, and it has become for us a belief system.
[3:08] Speaker 2: So I want to stay with that because it's fascinating.
[3:10] Speaker 2: In the book, you write, money isn't real, It has
[3:14] Speaker 2: no objective existence of its own. Explain how money is
[3:19] Speaker 2: really just this agreed upon collective system that everybody accepts,
[3:27] Speaker 2: even though it's an abstract concept that is created by people.
[3:33] Speaker 3: And the whole point of the book is that not
[3:37] Speaker 3: the whole point, but a main point of the book
[3:39] Speaker 3: is that money is a product of religion. So I'll
[3:42] Speaker 3: explain it say that again.
[3:44] Speaker 2: Money is a product of religion.
[3:46] Speaker 3: Money is a product of religion, and I'll explain it
[3:51] Speaker 3: in terms of that, because that's how this all becomes
[3:53] Speaker 3: very Germane. When money first appears in the historical record.
[3:57] Speaker 3: It is in these ancient messages Potamian temples. Temple officials
[4:02] Speaker 3: developed money, bab They developed money and writing actually as
[4:07] Speaker 3: a way to keep track of the temple's possessions. And
[4:11] Speaker 3: that is where it starts. And what emerged from that.
[4:16] Speaker 3: The realization of that actually was that this was an
[4:19] Speaker 3: incredibly efficient system. Money is actually a really good product.
[4:25] Speaker 3: If you think of terms of things we've invented over
[4:28] Speaker 3: our history. We invent fire, but you know how to
[4:32] Speaker 3: use fire, the wheel, bridges, boats, anything I could sit
[4:37] Speaker 3: here all day and do it right. Money is one
[4:39] Speaker 3: of those things we invented. Money was an incredibly efficient
[4:43] Speaker 3: way to keep track of resources. And what I find
[4:46] Speaker 3: interesting is that as soon as money emerges, that is
[4:50] Speaker 3: when you start to see what we really think of
[4:52] Speaker 3: as modern quote unquote human beings. Society takes off. It
[4:59] Speaker 3: flourishes because money is a valuable product. It's a useful product.
[5:03] Speaker 3: The problem has become that money is such a good
[5:07] Speaker 3: product that we've started to think of it on it
[5:09] Speaker 3: as this thing on its own, with its own values
[5:12] Speaker 3: and its own existence. And a lot of that is
[5:17] Speaker 3: tied up in our beliefs in religion, because, as I said,
[5:21] Speaker 3: more of its history was it directly a product of
[5:24] Speaker 3: religion than it was an independent thing that existed on
[5:27] Speaker 3: its own. So our beliefs in religion and gods and
[5:32] Speaker 3: supernatural beings that control what we do and how we
[5:35] Speaker 3: live is tied up very very closely with how we
[5:39] Speaker 3: feel about money.
[5:41] Speaker 2: Let me stay with the concept of Mesopotamia. You write
[5:45] Speaker 2: about a city, and in the so there's fifty thousand
[5:50] Speaker 2: plus people living within the confines of this walled city,
[5:54] Speaker 2: with tens of thousands more working in the field, working
[5:57] Speaker 2: in the farms and suburbs. But what's fascinating about the
[6:01] Speaker 2: description of the city is the single biggest building in
[6:06] Speaker 2: the city and perhaps in the world, is the temple,
[6:09] Speaker 2: which can be seen for miles and miles around, even
[6:13] Speaker 2: from outside of the walls of the city. And the
[6:17] Speaker 2: first writing is keeping track of here's how much barley
[6:22] Speaker 2: has come into the temple, Here's how much people owe
[6:25] Speaker 2: on this. Here's how we create a system of assets
[6:30] Speaker 2: and liabilities, of credit and debt. It all stems from
[6:35] Speaker 2: the fact that the entire city was driven by religion.
[6:41] Speaker 2: Plus people had to work to survive, and the powers
[6:45] Speaker 2: that be had to come up with a methodology of
[6:48] Speaker 2: keeping track of all this. Is that the genesis of
[6:52] Speaker 2: the close relationship between money and religion or is it
[6:57] Speaker 2: something else?
[6:58] Speaker 3: No, it's that exact. And what I tried to do
[7:02] Speaker 3: in talking about Europe was compare it to a modern city,
[7:05] Speaker 3: New York City. That's what Europe was like back five
[7:09] Speaker 3: thousand years ago. Is this great messa, cosmopolitan, metropolitan city.
[7:13] Speaker 3: And you're right, the temple was the largest. This whole
[7:16] Speaker 3: city literally revolved around the temple. And I think what's
[7:21] Speaker 3: important when we talk about modern and ancient cities is
[7:24] Speaker 3: to realize there were a lot of things that were similar,
[7:27] Speaker 3: but there was one thing that was massively different, and
[7:30] Speaker 3: it is that the city revolved around the temple in
[7:34] Speaker 3: those ancient societies, and I found this very fascinating myself.
[7:38] Speaker 3: In these ancient societies, the entire point of life actually
[7:43] Speaker 3: was geared around one goal, and that goal was to
[7:46] Speaker 3: please the gods. People in these cities believed that the gods,
[7:51] Speaker 3: multiple gods, were real, They existed, and they controlled everything,
[7:55] Speaker 3: and whether you lived or died, or how well you
[7:57] Speaker 3: lived and then died, and where you went after you died,
[8:00] Speaker 3: all of that was determined by these gods, and you
[8:03] Speaker 3: wanted to please the gods. There was no separation of
[8:06] Speaker 3: church and state. The church was the state, and the
[8:09] Speaker 3: state's entire existence was built around trying to please these gods.
[8:14] Speaker 3: And that framework is what money emerges from, and that framework,
[8:19] Speaker 3: I think is incredibly important to our understanding of how
[8:23] Speaker 3: we feel about money today. Wealth was seen as a
[8:27] Speaker 3: sign of the God's favor. If the God liked the city,
[8:31] Speaker 3: if the God liked the ruler, if the God liked
[8:33] Speaker 3: the people, they flourished, they had wealth. Money was a
[8:38] Speaker 3: representation of that. So money was a representation of the
[8:42] Speaker 3: God's favor, and you wanted more of it. Of course,
[8:46] Speaker 3: I really think that colors a lot about what we
[8:49] Speaker 3: think about money today and how we feel about it.
[8:52] Speaker 3: But it's something that has just been kind of buried
[8:54] Speaker 3: in our collective subconscious and we just don't see it.
[8:58] Speaker 2: So let's talk about confidence and faith, which you emphasized
[9:01] Speaker 2: throughout the book. What role did trust play in institutions,
[9:07] Speaker 2: be they government or banks, or even various religions in
[9:12] Speaker 2: shaping the public's belief about money over time.
[9:16] Speaker 3: Trust is a huge part of how we value money,
[9:21] Speaker 3: and I'll give you the good. A good example of
[9:23] Speaker 3: this is what I opened the book with nineteen thirty three,
[9:26] Speaker 3: The Great Depression. The United States is in just the
[9:30] Speaker 3: worst economic shape it's ever been in. The system has
[9:34] Speaker 3: largely failed, the banking system has collapsed, the government is
[9:39] Speaker 3: barely operating. And the government back then was not nearly
[9:43] Speaker 3: as large as it is now. It didn't have as
[9:44] Speaker 3: much of a direct impact in people's lives, and I
[9:48] Speaker 3: think in large parts of the country the government just
[9:51] Speaker 3: wasn't there, and I think there were real fears that
[9:53] Speaker 3: the entire American experiment was going to collapse over what
[9:57] Speaker 3: had happened in nineteen twenty nine. In the years after
[10:00] Speaker 3: so FDR comes in, he gets elected, he starts doing
[10:03] Speaker 3: It's a pretty fascinating thing at the time. He utilizes
[10:07] Speaker 3: a modern technology called radio. He does these fireside chats.
[10:11] Speaker 3: He just talks into the radio and he explains things
[10:15] Speaker 3: to people, and they were tremendously successful. They really worked.
[10:18] Speaker 3: What's the first fireside chat about money and banking? FDR?
[10:23] Speaker 3: The president gets on the radio and just explains to
[10:27] Speaker 3: people how the banking system works, how money works, what
[10:31] Speaker 3: they plan to do, how it's going to work, and
[10:33] Speaker 3: what he says to them is he says, you have
[10:35] Speaker 3: to have faith, you have to have belief in the banks,
[10:40] Speaker 3: in the money, and all these things, and collectively, if
[10:43] Speaker 3: we all have faith, we will succeed. It's amazing to
[10:47] Speaker 3: think that faith and trust were the things he was
[10:52] Speaker 3: really talking about. But if you turn it around and look,
[10:56] Speaker 3: every single time you have one of these incidents where
[10:59] Speaker 3: a currency fails and a government fails, and you have
[11:02] Speaker 3: hyperinflation and everything falls apart to come a denominator and
[11:06] Speaker 3: all those examples, people lose faith in the money, which,
[11:10] Speaker 3: if you think about what I was just saying, is
[11:12] Speaker 3: kind of weird. Why should faith in money matter at all?
[11:16] Speaker 3: If money was real, if money had its own existence,
[11:19] Speaker 3: if the intrinsic value of a dollar bill was something
[11:23] Speaker 3: that was tangible. For instance, a tree has intrinsic value, Copper, oil, commodity,
[11:29] Speaker 3: all these things have intrinsic values, intrinsic uses. They are real.
[11:34] Speaker 3: Your faith in them does not matter one bit whether
[11:37] Speaker 3: or not you believe in copper. Copper is still there
[11:40] Speaker 3: and everything you can use it for is still there.
[11:42] Speaker 3: Money is different. If you don't have faith in money,
[11:45] Speaker 3: and this one I'm telling you, look about Zimbabwe, Why
[11:48] Speaker 3: am Our, Germany, Argentina, all these examples. If you don't
[11:52] Speaker 3: have faith in money, money is useless. Why why should
[11:56] Speaker 3: faith matter? And the reason is because money isn't real
[12:00] Speaker 3: on money is just the system we agreed upon. As
[12:02] Speaker 3: long as people agree to use the system, the system works.
[12:05] Speaker 3: As soon as people stop believing in the value of
[12:07] Speaker 3: the system, they distrust it, it collapses. That is the core,
[12:13] Speaker 3: core part of everything I'm talking about.
[12:16] Speaker 2: So you mentioned in the book that one of the
[12:18] Speaker 2: first fireside chats that FDR did over the radio was
[12:22] Speaker 2: to discuss the quote loss of confidence in the soundness
[12:27] Speaker 2: of banks and his plan to restore faith. To restore confidence,
[12:33] Speaker 2: including things like the creation of the Securities and Exchange
[12:36] Speaker 2: Commission so we don't have problems on Wall Street and
[12:40] Speaker 2: the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation so we don't have these
[12:43] Speaker 2: various runs on banks, and on and on the list goes.
[12:47] Speaker 2: All of this sounds like it was just an attempt
[12:51] Speaker 2: to shore up the belief system, the faith in the
[12:55] Speaker 2: banking system. Is that what you're saying, Oh, yeah, absolutely,
[12:58] Speaker 2: I mean that's what it was.
[13:01] Speaker 3: I'm not accusing FDR of being underhanded, but in a way.
[13:05] Speaker 3: He was being a little underhanded. He was trying to
[13:08] Speaker 3: hypnotize people into believing in money again in US dollars
[13:12] Speaker 3: and using them, and he had to go on the
[13:15] Speaker 3: radio and he had to talk to them, and he
[13:16] Speaker 3: was an incredibly persuasive speaker. So he used that as
[13:20] Speaker 3: a tool. All the things you're talking about, though, the
[13:23] Speaker 3: regulatory structures he put in, those were tools to convince
[13:28] Speaker 3: people that these assets that they had previously believed in
[13:32] Speaker 3: and did not anymore believe in, still had some kind
[13:35] Speaker 3: of fundamental value that could be useful to society.
[13:40] Speaker 2: Huh. So one of the things FDR did was take
[13:44] Speaker 2: us off the gold standard, and gold had long been
[13:47] Speaker 2: thought of as, if not money, well certainly money. Like
[13:51] Speaker 2: how did the removal of the United States Treasury Department
[13:55] Speaker 2: in Central Bank from a gold standard impact our concept
[14:00] Speaker 2: of money?
[14:01] Speaker 3: Gold had been used and for you know, everyone knows
[14:03] Speaker 3: gold has been used throughout history as money, but gold
[14:06] Speaker 3: isn't actually money. Gold is a representation of money. Anything
[14:11] Speaker 3: can be a representation of money, gold, dollar bills, coins,
[14:16] Speaker 3: cawerie sheells, digits, bitcoin, you know, I mean you can
[14:20] Speaker 3: have a digital ledger that represents money. All of those
[14:24] Speaker 3: things can be used as money. None of them are money.
[14:27] Speaker 3: Money is the system. So in the thirties you have
[14:31] Speaker 3: the gold standard, the economy starts collapsing, people start hoarding gold.
[14:35] Speaker 3: There's no longer enough circulating currency for the government and
[14:39] Speaker 3: for FDR to do anything that he wants to do.
[14:42] Speaker 3: So he has to convince people to have faith in
[14:46] Speaker 3: the system. And what he does is, you can see this,
[14:49] Speaker 3: he maneuvers people over to believing in the system, and
[14:53] Speaker 3: he maneuvers them away from the faith in gold. That
[14:58] Speaker 3: isn't what matters. What matters is the soundness of the banks.
[15:01] Speaker 3: What matters is the soundness of the government. Believe in
[15:04] Speaker 3: those things, have confidence, have faith in all those things.
[15:07] Speaker 3: And when he did that, once he did that, he
[15:09] Speaker 3: got people kind of believing again. Then he went and
[15:11] Speaker 3: got rid of the gold standard.
[15:13] Speaker 2: So is money a store of value or is it
[15:15] Speaker 2: a medium of exchange?
[15:18] Speaker 3: Money is both of those things. Money is a store
[15:21] Speaker 3: of value, It is a medium of exchange. Is a
[15:23] Speaker 3: unit of account. Anything can really be a store of value.
[15:28] Speaker 3: Most of what you know the market's trade in are
[15:30] Speaker 3: stores of value. Anything can really be a unit of account.
[15:35] Speaker 3: It just so happens that it's dollars. But any currency
[15:38] Speaker 3: will work just as well as long as the people
[15:40] Speaker 3: who are using it all agree upon it, and all
[15:43] Speaker 3: of them can work as a means of exchange. Anything
[15:45] Speaker 3: can work as a means of exchange. Barter can work
[15:47] Speaker 3: as a means of exchange. Those are just functions. Those
[15:51] Speaker 3: are not the thing itself. The thing itself is nothing
[15:56] Speaker 3: more than a shared collective belief in this cety.
[16:00] Speaker 2: So to wrap up, I guess money is a collective delusion.
[16:04] Speaker 2: It's an abstract thing that would not exist without human beings,
[16:09] Speaker 2: unlike trees or copper or gold for that matter, but
[16:13] Speaker 2: it is part of a collective system of belief. It
[16:16] Speaker 2: relies on confidence, It relies on faith. If the system
[16:22] Speaker 2: is doubted, it begins to creak, and it begins to crack,
[16:25] Speaker 2: and we end up with circumstances like the Weimar Republic
[16:29] Speaker 2: or Zimbabwe. Which is why it's so important for a
[16:32] Speaker 2: society to maintain a belief that their systems and this
[16:38] Speaker 2: includes banks, debt, and credit are sounds and will continue
[16:43] Speaker 2: to work. I'm barry Redults. This is Bloomberg's at the
[16:48] Speaker 2: Money

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