<aside> 🤑 Our relationship with money is changing and with it, the surface of money is changing. As the translator of commerce, money has always been a form of human language. Now that our lives are moving online, that language is evolving.
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Today, the language of money feels very utilitarian. Numbers, cents, send, receive. That's it. Like a rich uncle you only hang out with long enough to swim in his pool, you only socialize with money online so long. Why? Simply put, digital money is lacking the texture and meme quality of a nice crisp Benjamin.
<aside> 🐥 Looking for a TL;DR? Read the tweets!
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https://notion-ga.ohwhos.now.sh/collect?tid=UA-171081139-1&host=moneymail.ai&page=/social-money-post
First, we carried around 🐚 shells then we started using metals like gold to trade with others. To secure our gold, we deposited it into 🏦 banks and they gave us paper certificates of deposit. Those CD's eventually became paper 💵 money. In the late 1970s, Visa upgraded paper with plastic 💳 cards with bank names all over them. Eventually, you could upload a pretty picture to be your debit card. Square's Cash App dropped a glow in the dark card that's pretty cool IRL.
Props to the Cash App design team.
As our money has evolved, so has its novelty, branding, and meme. Shells, gold, and precious stones were all effectively collectibles seeking fungibility. Coins and paper money are fungibility technology sporting your leader's face and the home team's name. We all rooted for it. Today, as we moved from plastic to card numbers in online text fields, the meme is missing. There is no interface of money beyond a random array of banking portals and checkout carts. As a result, most of our Internet money feels more utilitarian than a social communication tool.
So let's be real. Cards never really felt right when using them online. As we entered 2009, Satoshi gave us bitcoin, the first money truly built for the Internet. [His/her/their] disciples even gave it an orange coin logo and an "internet gold" meme. This changed everything. Almost 12 years later, we are seeing endless technical experiments with cryptocurrencies, Tech Co database money, and even Central Bank Digital Currencies.
<aside> ⚔️ The Arms for Internet 💸 Money begins.
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More to come on the great Internet money arms race next time.
But, what about the tactile nature of money? What about the social network of money or the meme of money? What about money as an engagement and gaming device?
Facebook Live lets viewers tip streamers with ⭐stars, a small step from our free supply of ❤️ hearts. Twitch viewers can tip and buy digital goods with 💠 Bits, a nostalgic reference to old school graphics in 🕹️games for its core users. Reddit Coins can be used to purchase and gift digital goods to RPAN streamers which increasing airtime allotted to a stream. Each of these is an early experiment with money that matches their community and how it can be used.
Reddit Coins and digital goods
Twitch bits can purchase digital goods to react in live stream chats
Twitch Bits include multiple denominations
At Moneymail, we believe we are just starting to scratch the surface of what money will look like, how it will act, and how we'll use our newest monetary language, money that's interactive, money that's engaging, money that's social.
We spent the last 15 years working for 👍 likes, ❤️ hearts, 🔁 retweets, and follows, anything for the clout. Insta filters, Twitter follow bots, and a meme worth dancing to on TikTok made the individual go viral. With virality, "influencers" were born and the Information Superhighway added a fast lane. In this fast lane, we created a world where personal brands are the new corporations.
https://twitter.com/lwsnbaker/status/1288648159518814210?s=20