Tommaso Bregani on London Daily News
9 Oct 2025
The anthropology of money: From coffee tabs to crypto wallets.
“Long before coins existed, communities ran on relational economies. Anthropologist David Graeber argued in Debt: The First 5000 Years that complex systems of obligation and reputation sustained economic life long before formal currency. In small villages, you might owe your neighbour a favour, not a coin. Credit wasn’t recorded in ledgers but in memory. This social architecture, the promise of future exchange, is the invisible scaffolding behind every financial institution today.”
