BBC World Service - The Compass, Money, Money, Money, Money, money, money: Trust

The wallet experiment illustrates several key dimensions of trust. We trust particular individuals, groups, and institutions: we might trust our neighbors but not strangers or the police. Trust is situational: I might trust you to return my wallet, but I might not trust you to care for my child. Trust inherently involves risk: if I’m guaranteed to

Mistrust is expensive. And providing trust through other means, like private trust brokers, has unintended negative consequences,

Unfortunately, because Bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies are not owned by anyone, we are reliant upon technology to give us the tools of trust that we are used to seeing with trusted third parties, such as banks, that are deeply ingrained in our consciousness.

the absence of trust adds immense costs to transactions. When we do business with people we know and trust, we are willing to extend credit, send orders before we receive payment, and otherwise take steps to speed a transaction. When we lack that trust, we invoke intricate mechanisms to prevent bad behavior.

For thousands of years, philosophers, thinkers and prophets have besmirched money and called it the root of all evil. Be that as it may, money is also the apogee of human tolerance. Money is more open-minded than language, state laws, cultural codes, religious beliefs and social habits. Money is the only trust system created by humans that can brid

Money has an even darker side. For although money builds universal trust between strangers, this trust is invested not in humans, communities or sacred values, but in money itself and in the impersonal systems that back it.