Currency

Currency will never be a single thing.  Currency is whatever we all agree holds value.  The problem is that often the value of currencies fluctuate out of control and lose their intended effectiveness, for example, by inflation or stock price fluctuation.  All of this is speculative - even national currencies, and should be regarded as volatile, and used for purposes of trade equalization only, not for investment.  

Investment by definition is an attempt to make money from nothing, which systematically doesn't make sense.  If the original intention of currency was to be a trade medium, it's become a form of psychological security that can be bought.

If bitcoin passkeys are lost, currency and its associated effort just disappears into thin air forever.  Virtual assets like NFTs and even stocks are only as valuable as the associated hype.  The problem with all this is that we're all attempting to make money without putting in associated effort.  Systems tend to balance themselves.  If many people make money from nothing, an equal amount of money will just disappear.  Playing investment games does pay off because, unlike a casino, the odds are slightly in the favor of the investor.  The unfortunate bit is that when we make money from nothing, somebody has to pay, and that's whoever sold at a low price, or whoever consumer is being abused by the company you put your money in.  When it comes to insurance, energy, and banking that is certainly the case - investors know these are the top dividend stock sectors, which means there is a constant stable flow of money coming out of customers' pockets and directly into investors'.

Ethical investing has become popular, but this is just another documentary that we could raise awareness about all day, while the root problems remain.

The only good investment is in self-sufficiency.  In your family's safety.  In a better world.

We will have to hold currencies in collectives after we are paid for exports, but we must appreciate their volatile nature.

Now, I'm going to go out on a limb here and suggest something.  The only reason why we are in such a panic to invest our money is because of inflation.  I'm no economist, but let's talk to one - It should be possible to have an economy whose currency experiences only minor and gentle inflation and deflation - a little joke, it's like the Buddha's concept of equanimity - “This refers to a state of mental calmness and composure, even in the face of both pleasant and unpleasant experiences. It's about not being overly swayed by emotions.”.  What is ideal is if we can just hold currency for a rainy day and not panic that it is going to disappear.  To have balance.  In a supply-and-demand based system, because supply and demand fluctuate healthily, the cost of things must also fluctuate, but as far as I can determine, the only reason why the value of currency fluctuates is that costs are only moving in one direction over time, which systemically doesn't make any sense in a fair system - it indicates that something broken can be fixed.  To me, that indicates that the devaluing currency is what drives prices up, which must be either due to mass-delusion, money-printing or theft.  So it's not really supply and demand that is the problem, but more the supply of currency.  In the vacuum of a better idea, desperate governments are panicking and moving to bitcoin, which at least they know can't be stolen or printed, but let's not be hasty - we can design a customized and secure digital currency to be used solely for inter-collective trading.  There's no urgency to grasp at speculatively secure currencies - the urgency is for self-sufficiency.

As we transition from the current economy to collectivism, we will have to use and invest in existing currencies in order to keep equilibrium, but ideally collectives could trade between each other using their own more-stable currency that could safely be saved.  It's much easier to design a simple and fair system on top of a simple and fair system.