Human transactions have come far since the Stone Age. The commodity trading of our ancestors eventually gave way to money, which in the past few thousand years has cycled through different forms, from wampum beads and metal to paper. In the 21st century, it often manifests as intangible electronic transfers and even cryptocurrencies. 

Just about anything can serve as money, so long as it's durable and scarce. Throughout much of Asia and Africa, cowry shells — the spent homes of sea snails small and large — did the job well into modern times.

Lumps of precious metals, like gold and silver, are commodities, too, with the added benefit of malleability. The first uniform metal money dates to China’s Zhou Dynasty, which forged tiny replicas to represent cowry shells, along with knives, spades and other tools

Instead of constantly moving coins from place to place, the Chinese government kept the coins all in one place and issued pieces of paper in their stead. This was the start of representative money, in which the money objects themselves are not valuable. From his travels in the East, Marco Polo brought this concept back to Europe, where it gave rise to banking.

Using what's called peer-to-peer technology, cryptocurrencies remove middlemen like banks and the government, allowing direct transactions between a vast community of users. Because so many people are independently keeping track of the transactions, it is all but impossible for anyone to cheat. This format removes the problem of trusting millions of people — you need only trust the system.

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