What is "money?"

So what is money?

In the United States, we accept the Dollar because it is the legal tender of our country, and it also happens to be the world reserve currency to exchange for, because of the US's vast economy and military power which the Dollar is backed by. We've only grown accustomed to see the $ sign because it has been around since the founding of this nation, or almost 300 years ago. The entire world is priced in Dollars. In an unlikely event, if today the US government fails due to civil wars or for whatever else that causes it to fail (unlimited money printing), does your so-called USD still hold its value?

If you somewhat drill down to center principles around money in economics, at the end of the day, money is just a belief system for people to trade goods. There was a time period in the United States when people treat cigarettes as money (USD was removed off the gold standard), and people in prisons today still use cigarette as a form of exchange. In ancient time, people bartered and traded with goods like wheats & grains; to people started exchanged with metals because of their unique properties; then to use papers to easily represent the value of exchanged goods; now to just digits showing on your electronic statement so it's easy to move around. The fact of matter is, anything can be money.

Now if you want to say if something makes good money or not, that's a completely different argument. And that's where people in the cryptospace believe Bitcoin can actually be sound money. If you study the original proposal of what Bitcoin was trying to be, its protocol enforces everybody who wishes to participate to play by the rules in an enclosed environment. The idea of sovereignty, which you're in control of your own money, and no one can control this monetary system unless he or she can overcome the enormous parameters set by the Bitcoin's protocol. This monetary system is purely incentives driven, which is what a free market is all about, and why make it so appealing to people who understood the technology and the ideology behind Bitcoin's invention.