Needs a Title
The belief that money has a real value is human-constructed. In reality, money is not real, but that’s something I already knew. Money gains or loses its value depending on the market conditions, the economy, and overall the federal reserve. Throughout the podcast, Stone Money spoke on the value being changed depending on the people. So the question is why does money matter? Why does it bring value? The answer? Money only matters to the people because they value it to make an exchange, and it happens again. The value comes from us. It can be anything.
For years it changed from stones, and money, to online banking, or even Bitcoin. We say whether something is worth something or not. Money has become something so easily accessible that now, it seems to have no value it is just a number. Throughout the articles and the podcast, I can say that my view on money hasn’t changed. It was things stated I already knew of. It did though give me more knowledge on the backstory of money. From depressions, to why prices go up, the first type of currency that existed, to the reality of money, and how
When in a Great Depression everyone decreases in work but prices skyrocket. During the great depression labeling gold as the new currency with extreme value made it all go away. The concept of money is to make it something that many want but not everyone can have. The more people can have it the less it is worth. With gold, that is what occurred.
Throughout the podcast Stone Money, they spoke about the Great Depression in Brazil. How no matter what the worth of something was one day it did not matter because the next day it had more value. This was all saved through the concept of fake money. In the article, “How Fake Money Saved Brazil” Channa Joffe-Walt spoke about the inflation in Brazil hit 80% per month and everything kept rising. This all occurred starting back in the 1950s when the government had printed money to build a new capital in Brasilia, causing everyone to believe that the Brazilian government had no help to control their inflation troubles. The cycle would go from getting a president with a new plan to the president freezing the banks, the president failing, getting voted out or impeached, and repeated. Years down the line there was a man named Bacha who wanted to create a new currency when voted into power and that is what he did. It was called a Unit of Real Value, the whole point was for it to not be real, with no coins or bills; still being able to use the currency given just now labeled under a different name. Once this occurred people did not understand it, but over time people realized it was more stable it finally became a real currency because it was something everyone could afford. The point to take out of all of this though is money is not real. A simple wordplay in this example was labeled as real money, but in reality, it had no market value. The people started placing value on it it made people believe there was a sense of purpose with it and now they can afford more things because the value was placed on them.
Another article by Anne Renaut named, “The Bubble Bursts on e-currency Bitcoin” talks about the online currency that finally had an actual crash. The crash was something a lot of people were waiting on, but yet again still put faith in it not happening so soon. The main struggle with Cryptocurrency is the value of being online causing it to be more vulnerable to Cyber attacks. Bitcoin is a virtual currency that can remain anonymous and be passed on to other people. Now in 2024, this has changed drastically with bitcoin worth being increased. With cryptocurrency even though it is not money existing it can be taken out as real money once your cryptocurrency gains value. The other side of Cryptocurrency as well is that it does not rely on banks to verify any of these transactions. The only time the money can be used is through digital transactions unless the person sells their cryptocurrency in order to have actual money from it. Again currency with no value, but placed in our hands given value. Pluses being becoming crypto-rich to being flat-out broke come with this. The currency fluctuates on a day-to-day basis because it is not only your money being placed on the line. We, the people have placed a value on cryptocurrency to a point where people feel the need to invest in it even if it is not necessary because now it is another version of income. It is the same thing with Bitcoin. None of it had real value until we gave it some sort of value. Not many people have Bitcoin causing it to be of higher value. With fewer people having it the more precious it becomes. Therefore giving it a higher value. I would compare this to seeing an eagle. It is not seen a lot, so when it does occur a lot of people tend to give it value because it is not always seen around.
With the articles and the Stone Money podcast, I have gained the knowledge that money is anything that people place value on. It can be something as simple as a stone, to something like Bitcoin. Everything depends on us. Even then not so much because it all comes down to the government’s needs. If the government sees struggle it will make ends meet by making the prices increase. Some struggles, others done, and some make ends meet just enough. Seeing all this brings me to the question of what is next for the economy. Not just the United States but for the world overall? Unfortunately, every year money is needed more than ever to survive in society today.
References
Joffe-Walt, C. (2010, October 4). How fake money saved Brazil. NPR. https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2010/10/04/130329523/how-fake-money-saved-brazil 
Renaut, A. (2013, April 13). The bubble bursts on e-currency bitcoin. Yahoo! News. https://sg.news.yahoo.com/bubble-bursts-e-currency-bitcoin-064913387–finance.html
life, the american. (2017, December 14). 423: The invention of money. This American Life. https://www.thisamericanlife.org/423/transcript
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Counterintuitive Spring 2024 
I’ve completed the Feedback and Grading cycle for students who requested Feedback on their Stone Money essays. You were not among them.
Now I’m grading the Stone Money assignments for students who did not request Feedback. While I would never deny any student a chance to revise work for grade improvements, Stone Money is not an assignment for which revision is required.
However, since you did not request Feedback before grading, if you do request feedback after receiving your grade, your request will have to be VERY specific, and my response will be MUCH MORE LIMITED than it would have been before grading.
I hope that seems fair. Expect your grade to show up at Canvas only, not here. I will leave another Reply to let you know when your grade has been posted.
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I understand, I have so much I forgot to request. I would still want your opinion for improvements regardless. So I do want your feedback whenever you have time
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I’ll post your provisional grade first, Gymrat. You can decide how much time you’d be willing to invest in revisions and I’ll spend the same amount of time on your feedback. This is a strong first draft, but if it were your own research paper, I’d insist that you study the subject matter more thoroughly to make more credible claims.
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I’ve put this post into Feedback Please. It’s the only way to get and keep my attention until I’ve provided feedback.
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OK, Gymrat. Let’s do some feedback.
—I’m never in favor of Rhetorical Questions. Period. So I’d get rid of the three that fall into the climax of your introduction there.
—The tone is nice. Like: I got this. Let me tell you about money.
—”the value being changed depending on the people” would be a perfect line in a poem, but here, as persuasive argument, it’s so vague it hardly means anything.
—The conclusion: “The value comes from us. It can be anything” is beautifully dense and concise.
—You’re just vamping here. There’s no real content.
—But you still project that confident tone. It’s impressive.
—I admire that you’re going for a strong example of something about gold and the Depression, but completely unclear how labeling gold brought about anything.
—If the argument made sense, this would be persuasive.
—Gymrat, we could take this one paragraph and spend a long session editing it as an example of why paragraphs can be too long.
—You’ve transmitted a lot of information here, but readers can’t ever figure out what you’re trying to prove with it. It keeps traveling to new material without processing anything.
—It contains several main ideas that deserve paragraphs of their own.
Gymrat, I don’t think I’m going to continue to the end of the essay with this first round of feedback. I’d like your reactions to decide whether to continue with more. If you revise this piece and put it back into Feedback Please, that will be sufficient notice.
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okay, I want you to know I have been looking through this still revising it. Should be done by Wednesday
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You must be revising it somewhere else, Gymrat. WordPress shows no revisions since I wrote “Needs a Title.”
—DSH
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