Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome to another episode of the Odd LODs podcast.
Speaker 1: I'm Joe Wasn't Thal, and I'm Tracy Alloway. Tracy, It's
Speaker 1: time for another episode about one of our favorite topics. Money.
Speaker 1: It's gotta be money, It's gotta be money. It's always money,
Speaker 1: I mean, all of our inner sense. I guess all
Speaker 1: of our episodes are money. But how could you talk
Speaker 1: about things about money if you don't even know what
Speaker 1: money is or where it comes from? I agree that
Speaker 1: all of our episodes are money in that what was
Speaker 1: that film you suppord money n Swan where people were going,
Speaker 1: you're so money swingers, Yeah, swingers that one. Our episodes
Speaker 1: are money in that sense, but they're also about money.
Speaker 1: They are. And of course there's one of our favorite topics,
Speaker 1: and today we have um. I think we're going to
Speaker 1: explored with a slightly different angle than we sometimes do.
Speaker 1: So we sometimes talk about the origins of money? Does
Speaker 1: money come from the state? Is money inherently credit based?
Speaker 1: What are the different kinds of things that we call money?
Speaker 1: I think we're gonna attack the question from a slightly
Speaker 1: different angle than we normally do. Yeah, I think this
Speaker 1: is going to be a really interesting episode because it's
Speaker 1: actually going to bring together a lot of the different
Speaker 1: discussions we've been having about specific types of money, so
Speaker 1: cash versus cryptocurrency, or different types of cryptocurrency like bitcoin
Speaker 1: versus something like libra, uh, the currency that Facebook is
Speaker 1: currently working on, and what the different use cases are
Speaker 1: for each of those, but also what the different sort
Speaker 1: of I guess societies that they create actually are, if
Speaker 1: that makes sense. Yeah, I like the way you put
Speaker 1: that society is that they create. And of course, like
Speaker 1: money is just like really interesting because obviously people pay
Speaker 1: pay for things with money, but you know, people do
Speaker 1: new things with money that they hadn't always done. So
Speaker 1: it's like people paying venmo to their friends and they
Speaker 1: leave funny messages along with their venmos, Like that's a
Speaker 1: new thing that wasn't always the case. So within this
Speaker 1: thing like payments or money, how we use it, what
Speaker 1: its role in society is, how it connects us. It's
Speaker 1: always evolving. Yeah, absolutely, And there's a big inclusion discussion
Speaker 1: to be had there as well, So who has access
Speaker 1: to different types of money, So I'm interested in touching
Speaker 1: on that as well. So today I'm really excited once
Speaker 1: again we have a past guest we had. I think
Speaker 1: it was probably a couple of years ago now, but
Speaker 1: we have her back. I'm very excited we're gonna be
Speaker 1: speaking with a Lanta Swords. She's the professor of Media
Speaker 1: Studies at the University of Virginia. She's also a fellow
Speaker 1: at the Burguing Institute, and she is the author of
Speaker 1: a recent book called New Money, How Money Became Social Media.
Speaker 1: So it will be interesting a different angle than we've
Speaker 1: typically had. But a Lana, thank you so much for
Speaker 1: joining us, Thanks for having me. It's good to be back,
Speaker 1: you know. So, like we said this, we like this
Speaker 1: topic what is money money? But there is some question
Speaker 1: that arises sometimes, I think, which is why bother, like
Speaker 1: why do we talk about this question? Like why is
Speaker 1: it interesting or why is it important? From your perspective,
Speaker 1: tackling this question from a different angle, and we'll get
Speaker 1: to this the content of your book about money as
Speaker 1: social media? Why is it even a thing we're studying
Speaker 1: in the first place? In your view? Well, I know
Speaker 1: for me, so I started my PhD program um right
Speaker 1: kind of in the aftermath of the last global financial crisis.
Speaker 1: So I was really in this moment of like I
Speaker 1: was entering into a moment of scholarly study when it
Speaker 1: seems like the whole world was asking that question, you know,
Speaker 1: what is money? Why is money? Why do governments and
Speaker 1: traditional financial institutions have like the say over what gets
Speaker 1: to be money? And that kind of like post two
Speaker 1: thousand eight moment was when we saw, I would say, like, really,
Speaker 1: the emergence of what we now call fintech, what we
Speaker 1: now call the sharing a con to me, what we
Speaker 1: i'll call um, you know, the gig economy, like all
Speaker 1: these different ways of doing money differently, of course, the
Speaker 1: crypto space, and so it suddenly seemed like like everybody
Speaker 1: was asking that kind of question, and so I became
Speaker 1: really interested in it at a time where I could
Speaker 1: also study people who were really interested in kind of
Speaker 1: questions of money nous um and at a time when
Speaker 1: people were starting to build new infrastructures to do money
Speaker 1: and do the economy differently. Um. And of course, my
Speaker 1: as you mentioned, I'm an assistant professor of media studies,
Speaker 1: and my background is in thinking about communication media technologies.
Speaker 1: So I, prior to that point, had been, prior to
Speaker 1: kind of turning to money, had been looking at the
Speaker 1: emergence of social media. UM, you know, what do cell phones?
Speaker 1: What do social media networks? Um? Mean for any number
Speaker 1: of different social questions. And I realized that there was
Speaker 1: almost no one inside the economy, inside academia, inside kind
Speaker 1: of this field of media studies looking at that communication
Speaker 1: and technological infrastructures that make money happen, and we're they
Speaker 1: were undergoing this like kind of tremendous moment of transformation.
Speaker 1: So for me, as someone who studies technologies that move
Speaker 1: information around and um, the kinds of social and cultural
Speaker 1: dimensions of those technologies, UM, I think it's important and
Speaker 1: interesting to study money because typically when we talk about money,
Speaker 1: we talked about kind of the politics or cultural meaning
Speaker 1: of money. It has to do with questions of like
Speaker 1: who has money, who doesn't have money, who's doesn't have
Speaker 1: enough money, who has too much money? But we don't
Speaker 1: usually think about the infrastructures that actually move money around
Speaker 1: and how those infrastructures themselves have meaning and have power,
Speaker 1: and how they're changing. So talk to us a little
Speaker 1: bit more about that point. What exactly is the overlap
Speaker 1: between media and money? Because I think to most people
Speaker 1: it's not going to be immediately apparent Oftentimes when I say,
Speaker 1: you know, my book is called How Payment Became Social Media, Um,
Speaker 1: people immediately go to Venmo. And of course that's true,
Speaker 1: like Venmo, such a cliche, such a cliche, immediately wondering,
Speaker 1: and lots of Venmo in the book. So and I
Speaker 1: think Vemo is really fascinating. But you know, Venmo is
Speaker 1: overtly designed to be social media. You know, I've one
Speaker 1: of my students mentioned once and I think that's even
Speaker 1: made it to the book. It's like literally Facebook Blue,
Speaker 1: you know, it's a social stream that you know, turns
Speaker 1: money into into a form of kind of media. But
Speaker 1: if we go back and we think about, you know,
Speaker 1: the the technologies of money, they have always kind of
Speaker 1: tracked alongside the money the technologies of communication and media
Speaker 1: more broadly. Um, so we could go back to thinking about,
Speaker 1: you know, the way coins, the way tally sticks, um,
Speaker 1: the way any number, whether you know big rocks that
Speaker 1: you you know, keep an oral history of of who
Speaker 1: owns it in the case of the TIV and the well,
Speaker 1: the isle of Yap. You know, those are all kind
Speaker 1: of information systems. And however we kind of keep track
Speaker 1: of information, whether it's through bits of shell or just
Speaker 1: kind of oral history is kind of the remit of
Speaker 1: what media and communication study scholars are interested in. But
Speaker 1: if we think a little bit more more recent so,
Speaker 1: paper currency does many of the same things that scholars
Speaker 1: in my field talk about paper UM culture print culture
Speaker 1: more generally doing so, you know, Benedict Anderson, who is
Speaker 1: a UM scholar of the printing press, talked about how
Speaker 1: the print and newspapers created an imagined community. It's his term,
Speaker 1: like the skies and scale of the nation state. So
Speaker 1: we kind of learned to think about ourselves as members
Speaker 1: of nations through the consumption of printed media. And similarly,
Speaker 1: print currency is covered with iconography of the nation state.
Speaker 1: It tells us an efficiently sanctioned past, and it allows
Speaker 1: us to project into kind of a shared future UM
Speaker 1: as kind of a community of shared faith. If we
Speaker 1: then you know, think about okay, like move forward into
Speaker 1: what you know, the technologies of money have been and
Speaker 1: so you know, the telegraph, you know, we think about
Speaker 1: Western Union is being primarily a money transfer service these days,
Speaker 1: but it's also you know, one of the most important
Speaker 1: you know, communication systems. More broadly, moving forward into the
Speaker 1: twenty later in the twentieth century, the very same computers
Speaker 1: and in some cases some of the same engineers who
Speaker 1: built the early Internet. We're also um building the Visa
Speaker 1: master Card network, which is this kind of you know,
Speaker 1: global communication system. So and you can still hear in
Speaker 1: some like I haven't been to a bar in a
Speaker 1: really long time, but um, but you can still hear
Speaker 1: from the back and like the back a t M
Speaker 1: of some sketchy bar like modem noises coming out of
Speaker 1: a t M s And it kind of reminds us that,
Speaker 1: you know, this is an Internet of sorts. You know,
Speaker 1: I'm old enough to remember that you couldn't you know,
Speaker 1: you couldn't swipe a credit card or my mom couldn't
Speaker 1: swipe a credit card when someone was on the phone
Speaker 1: at the store in the eighties and nineties. And so
Speaker 1: now when we talk about new payment systems, we're looking
Speaker 1: at mobile, we're looking at the Internet. We're thinking about crypto,
Speaker 1: which is like in many ways, there's a reason why
Speaker 1: we call it. You know, people jokingly call it magic
Speaker 1: Internet currency and that sort of thing. So I try
Speaker 1: to say, all right, let's rethink money as communication, you know,
Speaker 1: think about transactions as literal like transactions moving across from
Speaker 1: one account to another UM and then look at the
Speaker 1: systems that power that communication, whether they are tally stick paper,
Speaker 1: you know, UM, telegraph, Internet, whatever the case may be,
Speaker 1: and say, all right, you know what are the politics
Speaker 1: of those systems? Who manages them? How do we use
Speaker 1: them to create meaning in our everyday lives. It's interesting.
Speaker 1: You may not know this, but on a recent episode,
Speaker 1: so Tracy after years and years of skepticism or recent
Speaker 1: episode turned her into a bitcoin bowl. She she converted anyway,
Speaker 1: But it's interesting thinking about, like you mentioned, imagined communities
Speaker 1: and Benedict Anderson in the printing press sort of reifying
Speaker 1: the state because obviously you look at physical currency, icons
Speaker 1: of the state, founding fathers, other symbols that sort of
Speaker 1: emphasize this. It's interesting to think of like sort of
Speaker 1: like bitcoin and crypto, is this sort of like post
Speaker 1: nation state currency which fits with the Internet. Is this
Speaker 1: sort of like you know, post newspapers posts, sort of
Speaker 1: like post post print communities. I guess yeah, And you know,
Speaker 1: I I will say I'm not, you know, hugely bullish
Speaker 1: on crypto myself. I've been I've written some academic articles
Speaker 1: about UM, bitcoin and blockchain going back many years now,
Speaker 1: I'm old in bitcoin time, I guess, and I do
Speaker 1: think that a huge part of what UM appeals about
Speaker 1: about bitcoin or about crypto is the kind of community aspect.
Speaker 1: So this like sense of being part of a shared
Speaker 1: future that looks a particular way. UM. You know, I
Speaker 1: have said, I've written that, you know, all money is
Speaker 1: a stake. UM. It allows you to stake your claim
Speaker 1: in a particular future. Like all money is kind of
Speaker 1: a prediction market in some ways, because if you're willing
Speaker 1: to accept and hold money, you're kind of betting on
Speaker 1: a particular set of outcome. So if you do believe
Speaker 1: in the future that is as folks talked about in
Speaker 1: the nineties, like homesteading on the electronic frontier UM, and
Speaker 1: that you're the pioneer UM, then why wouldn't you kind
Speaker 1: of put your money where your mouth is, so to speak,
Speaker 1: and and start thinking about what kind of monetary systems
Speaker 1: would that would entail. So my time frame might be
Speaker 1: slightly off here because I haven't lived in the States
Speaker 1: for a while now, but from what I remember, like
Speaker 1: even five years ago or so, it was kind of
Speaker 1: difficult to send money very quickly to just a random person. Um.
Speaker 1: You know, you could do a wire transfer, you could
Speaker 1: do a money order, right, a check, things like venmo
Speaker 1: or um other sort of instantaneous payment methods, maybe sending
Speaker 1: bitcoin over the internet something like that. They weren't really
Speaker 1: around yet. Why was that the case? Like, what is
Speaker 1: the justification for making money transfers that slow for so long? Yeah,
Speaker 1: whenever I speak to, you know, talk with folks in
Speaker 1: other parts of the world, they're always like, they don't
Speaker 1: really quite get venmo, because, um, it doesn't quite make
Speaker 1: sense that we haven't yet had a good way to
Speaker 1: send friends um money quickly and easily. And the United
Speaker 1: States has kind of historically been behind in P two
Speaker 1: P payments. And I I think there's kind of a
Speaker 1: couple of different answers to that, for you know, in
Speaker 1: terms of the reason why, um, you know, one is,
Speaker 1: as you know, just general lack of public investment UM
Speaker 1: or general lack of of you know, infrastructural investment that
Speaker 1: would enable something like that. In a lot of places
Speaker 1: in Europe, there is just they're more public options for
Speaker 1: peer to peer payment UM. But also I think one
Speaker 1: of the things I write about the book is that
Speaker 1: the Visa master card network was developed at a time
Speaker 1: that imagined a much more um kind of dietic economy.
Speaker 1: So like there were consumers which were people, and there
Speaker 1: were merchants that were businesses, and there were there wasn't
Speaker 1: really away for a person to be a merchant um
Speaker 1: or and therefore a person to kind of accept payments. Um.
Speaker 1: And so we have as you may know, and I
Speaker 1: could really geek out about this for a very long time,
Speaker 1: but people tell me, um that not everyone is like
Speaker 1: Super in the credit card acquiring value change. So with
Speaker 1: credit cards, um, every everyone has a bank that represents themselves,
Speaker 1: that represents them as they enter the kind of credit
Speaker 1: card network. So people have a bank that's their issuing
Speaker 1: bank that issues them a credit card. UM. Let's say
Speaker 1: I have a Chase UM Sapphire Cards, so chases my issuer.
Speaker 1: And then if I am a merchant, UM, I have
Speaker 1: an acquiring bank who you know, maybe let's say oftentimes
Speaker 1: it's also Chase, but um, you know, it could be
Speaker 1: Bank of America Merchant Services, and that acquiring bank, you know,
Speaker 1: acquires payments on my behalf but also kind of holds
Speaker 1: the risk for me. And what that means is that
Speaker 1: if a customer wants their money back UM, then they
Speaker 1: will UM ask for chargeback through their issuer, who will
Speaker 1: then go through the network and then go to the acquirer,
Speaker 1: and the acquirer, under the rules of the network, typically
Speaker 1: is mostly obliged to just give them their money back,
Speaker 1: so UM, so the acquirer essentially pays the issuer and
Speaker 1: the issuer then issues a refund to the customer. So
Speaker 1: then the acquirer has to then go to the merchant
Speaker 1: and say, hey, I've issued this chargeback, I need money
Speaker 1: from you. And if the which happens all the time,
Speaker 1: it's not usually that big a deal. UM. But if
Speaker 1: for whatever reason, the merchant faces a ton and a
Speaker 1: ton of chargebacks, or the merchant goes out of business,
Speaker 1: or the merchant was a scammer, the acquirer is left
Speaker 1: holding the bag for all of that risk. So acquiring
Speaker 1: services are priced according to risk. So if you're an acquirer,
Speaker 1: one of the ways you make money is by um
Speaker 1: doing higher risk payments. UM. So anyone who, for the
Speaker 1: most part, who's an issue, who's a merchant, can find
Speaker 1: an acquirer who like matches their risk appetite. But historically
Speaker 1: that has not been so there's no has not been
Speaker 1: any real way for individuals to have their risk assessed
Speaker 1: by an acquirer. And there has never been a kind
Speaker 1: of acquirer for people. Um So, there has never been
Speaker 1: a way for people to accept payments through the Visa
Speaker 1: master Card network. And then you know, the big innovation
Speaker 1: in that space was PayPal in the nineties. Um And
Speaker 1: of course PayPal rides the rails not primarily of the
Speaker 1: Visa master Card network, but of the A C H network.
Speaker 1: UM So that's why you know, PayPal prefers it when
Speaker 1: folks use their checking account rather than like having to
Speaker 1: access and having to pay fees to access the network
Speaker 1: the Visa master Card network. So it we never it
Speaker 1: was built in a time. The Visa master Card network
Speaker 1: was built in a time in the you know, nineteen
Speaker 1: seventies when we didn't have as much of a peer
Speaker 1: to peer economy, didn't have as much as a person
Speaker 1: to person, we didn't have as much of a press
Speaker 1: person imagination for how the economy would work. And I
Speaker 1: think that that has a lot to do with our
Speaker 1: media infrastructure. So I mean the Internet in many ways,
Speaker 1: like allows us to imagine ourselves as economic actors um
Speaker 1: as people, and so the internet kind of had to
Speaker 1: figure out a way to allow us to get paid
Speaker 1: and to pay so and I'm just wondering. So, you know,
Speaker 1: when Facebook launched Libra, which is sort of like the
Speaker 1: next iteration of a lot of what we're talking about,
Speaker 1: there were a lot of cynics out there who were saying, well,
Speaker 1: this is just a way for Facebook to get additional
Speaker 1: data on its users. I'm curious, like how much of
Speaker 1: these new payment systems are about learning more about the
Speaker 1: individual to your point, versus you know, just dealing with
Speaker 1: the merchant. Yeah, I mean absolutely, UM. I think that
Speaker 1: that like anything else coming out of the tech industry,
Speaker 1: you know, there is a data imperative, there's a data
Speaker 1: play UM. Merchants, as I mentioned, pay to receive payments
Speaker 1: and if and for the most part, we don't you know,
Speaker 1: people don't pay to be paid, nor do we UM,
Speaker 1: nor are we willing to really pay to pay UM.
Speaker 1: So there has to be some way that like this
Speaker 1: is being monetized UM. And so for the most part
Speaker 1: that has been you know, imagined like everything else as
Speaker 1: and I kind of when I say how payment became
Speaker 1: social media, A big part of what I mean, is
Speaker 1: like social the Silicon Valley, since the term which means
Speaker 1: that there is a social data component um. And you know,
Speaker 1: for a long time, folks in this kind of like
Speaker 1: new payment space talked about like mobile payments as kind
Speaker 1: of the holy grail of social data sets, because there
Speaker 1: was this kind of dream that if you could actually finally,
Speaker 1: um you know, close the loop between targeted message to
Speaker 1: actual purchase in real space and time, UM, then you
Speaker 1: would um you know, do something you know, no advertiser
Speaker 1: has ever done before. I think that some of the
Speaker 1: business models have moved away, um to some extent, from
Speaker 1: the kind of like direct advertising type of targeted advertising
Speaker 1: type of business model to thinking about things like developing
Speaker 1: new systems of risk analytics, UM, you know, just kind
Speaker 1: of applying data to whatever data can be used for.
Speaker 1: And and in some cases I've been somewhat convinced by
Speaker 1: Tim Wong's new book that that basically are argues that
Speaker 1: it's possible that we don't we can't actually get as
Speaker 1: much value out of all of these um data sets
Speaker 1: as we may hope, and then we may see something
Speaker 1: we may be in the middle of a data bubble.
Speaker 1: But nevertheless, the kind of Quest for Data, which you
Speaker 1: guys should have him on the podcast. He's really interesting.
Speaker 1: We should. I was just thinking, what's the name of
Speaker 1: his book is called I Can see it? Sub Prime
Speaker 1: attention crisis advertising and the time bomb at the heart
Speaker 1: of the Internet. Sounds good? Is this like how I buy?
Speaker 1: Like I bought like a new Dutch oven the other
Speaker 1: day and then now all I get is ads for
Speaker 1: Dutch as if you were a Dutch oven collector. Wait,
Speaker 1: if we collector, it might make sense. But if it were,
Speaker 1: like if it were some theoretically efficient market for data,
Speaker 1: someone's getting screwed. Like someone's buying a lot of impressions
Speaker 1: that probably they wish they weren't, you know, as all
Speaker 1: of the right exactly, and as all of the almost
Speaker 1: every major social media company has tried to do payment
Speaker 1: it's over the last ten years, um, with varying degrees
Speaker 1: of success, and they've all applied kind of their standard
Speaker 1: m o um too the what they think they're going
Speaker 1: to do with it. So you know, Google has imagined
Speaker 1: that they will sell like AdWords type of thing as
Speaker 1: it relates to payments. Facebook has imagined that they would
Speaker 1: kind of hoard it and figure out what they were
Speaker 1: going to do with it. Venmo is kind of interesting
Speaker 1: because Veno has a public api. Um, it's quite easy
Speaker 1: to browse Venmo data. There's a lot of interesting art
Speaker 1: projects that UM kind of ticket exploit this so um
Speaker 1: that one of my favorites is called public by Default,
Speaker 1: and that is by an artist called UM but named
Speaker 1: hand the Duke, and she basically um downloaded all Venmo
Speaker 1: transactions from the year seen and used it to create
Speaker 1: portraits of individual people. She calls them the humans of Venmo,
Speaker 1: and she profiles like young lovers obviously getting into an
Speaker 1: argument and then making up and breaking up, and this
Speaker 1: one woman who's seems to spend an inordinate amount of
Speaker 1: money on junk food, and someone who is almost definitely
Speaker 1: a weed dealer. UM, and she kind of and she
Speaker 1: kind of uses it to to say, like, you know,
Speaker 1: which the reason why I think this is so interesting
Speaker 1: is that, yes, she's using it to say we should
Speaker 1: probably be making this private. But it also shows, you know,
Speaker 1: really how like poignant the stories are money tells are
Speaker 1: and how these are like lived experiences. Yeah. So I know,
Speaker 1: you say, like it's a cliche and everyone goes to Venmo,
Speaker 1: but there's obviously a reason for this because it's just
Speaker 1: so obvious and like I use Venmo, but you know,
Speaker 1: like I don't put like clever things in my messages.
Speaker 1: I just like say straight up if I like, if
Speaker 1: I'm splitting lunch, I'm splitting lunch. But obviously people do,
Speaker 1: and they like use emojis or you know, tongue in
Speaker 1: cheek jokes. Why like why is and you see, like
Speaker 1: it's kind of weird that it's people are default public
Speaker 1: or that they let themselves, especially when you can then
Speaker 1: reverse engineer you can figure. You know, there was some
Speaker 1: site that I saw it was basically just like every
Speaker 1: like trains, yeah, vice mobized yeah Vice. So like why
Speaker 1: and when when you when people research this, what is
Speaker 1: it about the desire to make it fun their transactions,
Speaker 1: or to make it public, or to even reveal a
Speaker 1: legal activity that people are so comfortable doing. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean I do think that the I do think that
Speaker 1: money is fundamentally social, Our transactions are, and I think
Speaker 1: that for a long time, I think that people are
Speaker 1: uncomfortable admitting it, um and uncomfortable. Uh, and that's true
Speaker 1: for scholars, like you know, whether we fall onto the
Speaker 1: side of being like economists who think like money is
Speaker 1: pursuing you know, some sort of rational economic interests, or
Speaker 1: we fall under the camp of being Marxists who thinks
Speaker 1: that um, all money reduces all the quality in the
Speaker 1: world two mere quantities UM. Historically, scholars have given money
Speaker 1: kind of short shrift, like it's insufficiently social um and
Speaker 1: and that or that money sociality is an aberration from
Speaker 1: how it's supposed to act UM. And I think in
Speaker 1: everyday life we tend to think about money is something
Speaker 1: we shouldn't talk about UM or something that is we
Speaker 1: really feel the need to set apart from our social lives,
Speaker 1: our friendships, and Venmo kind of reveals how deeply social
Speaker 1: it is and how kind of fun it can be.
Speaker 1: You're meaningful it can be UM. But I do think
Speaker 1: that that sociality isn't so straightforward as like these mirror
Speaker 1: like I will put a joke that makes perfect sense
Speaker 1: with the transaction that I'm I'm doing UM. And what
Speaker 1: I mean by that is when when I talk to
Speaker 1: young people who are big users of Venmo, they describe
Speaker 1: the kind of public performance element as usually indeed quite performative.
Speaker 1: So you're paying your rent to your roommate, but you're talking,
Speaker 1: You're putting Margarita emojis to ensure that everyone has a
Speaker 1: sense that your social life is more interesting than it is,
Speaker 1: right exactly. And so I do think that that anyone
Speaker 1: who goes to Venmo data hoping to find some truth
Speaker 1: um that is very straightforward, is probably going to have
Speaker 1: to really dig to find these kind of like clear
Speaker 1: cut stories. But I do think that what makes the
Speaker 1: data interesting to advertisers or to you know, the FBI
Speaker 1: is the um kind of social network, that kind of
Speaker 1: social graph inaggregate, So it doesn't really matter what I'm
Speaker 1: saying to you, Um, it's so more so that we
Speaker 1: can kind of trace the transactions of the kind of
Speaker 1: flow of money. So yeah, I mean, I do think
Speaker 1: I think an interesting part of that data set is
Speaker 1: that it is so available, but it is definitely one
Speaker 1: that we I don't think anyone who has really figured
Speaker 1: out quite yet how um, it should be wielded or
Speaker 1: how it can be best wielded. Oh. The other thing
Speaker 1: I'll say about Venmo is that they've tried to sell
Speaker 1: themselves as an advertising, um, a side of advertising more recently.
Speaker 1: So they there's like an ad on the Vemo side
Speaker 1: as of a couple of weeks ago that shows like
Speaker 1: to just some guys having a conversation about some pants
Speaker 1: they bought. So it's like, you know, oh, sweet khakis, bro,
Speaker 1: and the other guys like, yeah, they fit pretty well,
Speaker 1: and it's like the most artificial conversation you can imagine.
Speaker 1: But the the advertising copy is, you know, you know,
Speaker 1: puts your brand at the center of real authentic conversations
Speaker 1: between friends. And when the young people that I interview
Speaker 1: or my students UM at University of Virginia look at this,
Speaker 1: they just kind of think it's it's a joke. So
Speaker 1: it's it's very social, but it might not be um
Speaker 1: social in the way that people who, you know, the
Speaker 1: folks who want to make money off of it, hope
Speaker 1: that it is. Um There's something that we briefly touched
Speaker 1: upon that I wanted to go back to and talk
Speaker 1: to in further detail, and that was the idea that
Speaker 1: money has historically always been wrapped up in notions of
Speaker 1: the nation state, and now we're sort of seeing that disrupted.
Speaker 1: And I think you use in your book this analogy
Speaker 1: that it's sort of like new media disrupting the old
Speaker 1: media and the old media would be the state in
Speaker 1: this particular case. And you dig into that a little
Speaker 1: bit more, and what does it actually mean for society
Speaker 1: if money starts being divorced from the covernment? Mm hmm. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So in some ways this goes back to the home
Speaker 1: setting on the electronic frontier analogy. So, UM, you know,
Speaker 1: I hear people, I've long heard people tell me that
Speaker 1: the bitcoin is like the Internet in UM. So it's this,
Speaker 1: you know, the fresh new thing that's open for you know, um,
Speaker 1: reimagining all aspects of society. UM. And so I do
Speaker 1: think that many people who come to designing new money
Speaker 1: systems UM, specifically new currency systems, are overtly trying to
Speaker 1: like accelerate the process of the kind of decoupling of
Speaker 1: money from the nation state. I mean, if you go
Speaker 1: back and read some of the memoirs of the folks
Speaker 1: UM involved in the early days of PayPal. Even PayPal,
Speaker 1: which was not bitcoin, you know, did not have the
Speaker 1: same kind of aspirations that bit going does was imagic
Speaker 1: as kind of a libertarian project that would allow money
Speaker 1: to move around the world very quickly, UM, that would
Speaker 1: disrupt some of the traditional state and traditional financial intermediaries, etcetera. UM,
Speaker 1: that clearly isn't exactly what it became. And even before that,
Speaker 1: UM de Hawk, who is the kind of like unsung
Speaker 1: visionary behind Visa. So he was the CEO UM and
Speaker 1: founder of Visa. He's a really fascinating person. But in
Speaker 1: he right he wrote in the seventies that you know,
Speaker 1: money now is nothing more than alphanumeric information inscribed on
Speaker 1: a magnetic strip. And therefore, in very soon, UM, traditional
Speaker 1: governments and traditional financial institutions will no longer UM have
Speaker 1: a monopoly on the kind of issue and movement of money. UM.
Speaker 1: So this kind of like re envisioning what society would
Speaker 1: be and kind of disrupting state issued currency has sort
Speaker 1: of been at the heart of financial innovation for a
Speaker 1: very very long time, and sometimes quite overtly, sometimes less.
Speaker 1: But then, you know, thinking back to this idea that
Speaker 1: bitcoin is the Internet, um in I think that you know,
Speaker 1: we we kind of have to follow what actually happened
Speaker 1: with the Internet. I mean, the Internet is not a
Speaker 1: anarcho capitalist utopia or dystopia as the case maybe. You know,
Speaker 1: the Internet has primarily been carved up by platforms and
Speaker 1: corporate behemoths, and I don't think there's necessarily any reason
Speaker 1: that we would anticipate that the same wouldn't happen for
Speaker 1: the kind of issue of extra national non state currency. Um.
Speaker 1: I don't know why we're imagining. We we so often
Speaker 1: imagine a future, but I mean it's cool that they're trying. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, that's the thing. It's like, you know, there's
Speaker 1: a lot of like hand like it's you know, it's
Speaker 1: sort of the Internet. I think maybe it's because you know,
Speaker 1: I'm older, but you know, ten years ago, I thought
Speaker 1: the Internet was more fun when it wasn't just like
Speaker 1: Facebook and Twitter and Google and people had individual websites
Speaker 1: and dogs and all that stuff. And then the Internet
Speaker 1: gutless cool when those things went away. So it's cool
Speaker 1: that people are trying, right, Absolutely, I mean it's something
Speaker 1: that's not owned by a Silicon Valley trillion dollar unicorn. Absolutely.
Speaker 1: But I think the question is why did that happen? Um?
Speaker 1: You know what did over focusing on say I will
Speaker 1: I don't want to get too into the question of regulation,
Speaker 1: but are there ways in which the I that kind
Speaker 1: of fantasy that the Internet should be divorced from going
Speaker 1: back to again speak, Um, you know, the like meat
Speaker 1: space governments, and that the Internet was truly going to
Speaker 1: be this like heterotopia that existed in cyberspace that was
Speaker 1: like somewhere else and we should be really hands off
Speaker 1: about it. Um. Did that allow those platforms to kind
Speaker 1: of come in and carve it up? Um? So another question,
Speaker 1: I guess, you know, another way to put that would be,
Speaker 1: having learned that lesson, how can we protect, um, the
Speaker 1: kind of future of the Internet and into the future
Speaker 1: of the kinds of you know, when it comes to money.
Speaker 1: So if we're if we're really imagining a future where
Speaker 1: money is primarily so, I actually don't think state issue
Speaker 1: currency is going anywhere, but I do think that it
Speaker 1: will probably live alongside a variety of other currency forms.
Speaker 1: And I don't necessarily believe that those currency forms will
Speaker 1: all be you know, an archo capitalist or libertarian or
Speaker 1: or however inflected with any kind of values. Alternative money forms.
Speaker 1: I think that we have every reason to believe that
Speaker 1: they might be corporate moneys, and maybe we don't want that.
Speaker 1: You know, everybody joked a couple of years I guess
Speaker 1: it was about a year ago now, maybe more than that. UM,
Speaker 1: when Howard Schultz you know CEO, former CEO and uh
Speaker 1: of of Starbucks. But this was some time before he
Speaker 1: launched his presidential campaign. Um was saying he does think
Speaker 1: that there will be a future of of non state
Speaker 1: money forms that are based on block chains, but he
Speaker 1: doesn't think that they will be bitcoin or cryptocurrencies like bitcoin. Rather,
Speaker 1: they will be issued by a few, as he put it,
Speaker 1: kind of like trusted brands. Um that would you know,
Speaker 1: steward these money forms. And everyone kind of laughed at him.
Speaker 1: It was like a funny little moment of like Twitter
Speaker 1: schadenfreud for like somebody said something that sounded really stupid.
Speaker 1: But if you think about it, Starbucks has probably the
Speaker 1: most ubiquitous, most still most widely used mobile payment system
Speaker 1: in the United States. Um, we you know, we've Venmo
Speaker 1: and other payment companies would have been trying for a
Speaker 1: very long time to get an app on people's phones,
Speaker 1: and really before Venmo, the only one that was on
Speaker 1: anybody's phones was a Starbucks app. Um. They have greater
Speaker 1: geographic breadth and depth than the US Postal Service. So
Speaker 1: if we compare them to postal banking in terms of
Speaker 1: like what a branch network might look like, they're doing
Speaker 1: pretty good. They are truly global. They do have something
Speaker 1: like they're you know, loyalty points and all of that
Speaker 1: that people really do care about. When you get to
Speaker 1: talking to people about their Starbucks stars, they get, um,
Speaker 1: really passionate about it. So I can imagine a future
Speaker 1: where many of our kind of plural currencies are issued
Speaker 1: by brands are corporate and you know, we can't stay
Speaker 1: too focused on the kind of um sci fi vision
Speaker 1: of the future and instead kind of think about what
Speaker 1: you know, various forms of utopian dystopia will look like.
Speaker 1: And historically, I say, we fight for the sci fi version.
Speaker 1: Maybe it'll happen eventually, I mean you could, but let's
Speaker 1: not accept it. Yeah, let's not just let's not preemptively surrender. Well,
Speaker 1: you know, historically, I mean Tracy mentioned that, you know,
Speaker 1: money has we're moving away from money, as you know,
Speaker 1: being tied the nation state, but historically, and in many
Speaker 1: places in the world, more often than not, money has
Speaker 1: been quite plural. Um. So you know, of course the
Speaker 1: free banking era. But um, you know, one of my
Speaker 1: favorite books on this is a book called City Reading
Speaker 1: by David Hankin, who's a historian, where he writes about
Speaker 1: how in before the Civil War, when people moved to
Speaker 1: New York City, they had to negotiate all different kinds
Speaker 1: of monetary media, you know, um, bank notes issued by
Speaker 1: countless different banks, but also bank notes that were issued
Speaker 1: by banks that had gone bust, counterfeits real ones, but
Speaker 1: that you know. So it's like, is your bank good?
Speaker 1: And is like the money? Is the bank good? And
Speaker 1: is the money good? And like and is this money
Speaker 1: going to be even if it is a real bank?
Speaker 1: Is it something that someone will take in the city
Speaker 1: that I live in, Like, maybe they'll take it in Philadelphia,
Speaker 1: but they won't take it New York. Um. And And
Speaker 1: to be to be a city liver, the city dweller
Speaker 1: in um antebellum New York, you had to really know
Speaker 1: how to add a glance, like decide if you're going
Speaker 1: to take a form of money, if you could use
Speaker 1: a form of money, um. And it was really complicated.
Speaker 1: People live very complicated monetary lives. And I think so
Speaker 1: I think that more we're going to have to learn
Speaker 1: with living in a kind of cacophonous monetary media ecosystem,
Speaker 1: And in some ways we already are. If we think
Speaker 1: about things like Starbucks cards, or you know, my Chase
Speaker 1: Sapphire reserve confers all kinds of uh um benefits upon
Speaker 1: me um. If I use an E B T card,
Speaker 1: I can only I can't buy hot rotisserie chicken, but
Speaker 1: I can buy because that's prepared food and it is disallowed.
Speaker 1: But I can buy chick rotisserie chicken that has been
Speaker 1: taken out of the hot case and chilled, making it
Speaker 1: no longer hot food. UM. So I am really interested
Speaker 1: in the question of, like what is monetary mass media
Speaker 1: and what happens when we move to monetary social media,
Speaker 1: which is like, you know, all of these new kinds
Speaker 1: of systems, but in many cases we're already living in
Speaker 1: a world where mass media when it comes to money
Speaker 1: is kind of a myth um, where money is really
Speaker 1: complicated for people, and we need to kind of pay
Speaker 1: attention to that. So that Antebella, New York example reminded
Speaker 1: me of something else that I wanted to ask you,
Speaker 1: which is, if we're talking about money as a societal thing, well,
Speaker 1: societies are about inclusion, but that also means excluding some people. Right.
Speaker 1: You can't have a group of people without sort of
Speaker 1: creating an opposite group that you compare and contrast yourself
Speaker 1: against and I can see like in New York, making
Speaker 1: the money system as complicated as possible was probably a
Speaker 1: very good way of distinguishing New Yorkers from you know,
Speaker 1: the routs who are coming in from the country or whatever.
Speaker 1: What sort of barriers are being built into new systems
Speaker 1: of money and what does that mean for the future.
Speaker 1: There are questions of inclusion exclusion. So for example, you know,
Speaker 1: I'm kind of a soft soft war with this very
Speaker 1: expensive smoothie store UM here in my town because they
Speaker 1: refused to take cash UM. And you know, they're like,
Speaker 1: here's that lady who's coming around again, who wants to
Speaker 1: talk to us about how we're excluding poor people from
Speaker 1: our smoothies. But it's kind of true. You know, the
Speaker 1: kinds of money that we take create various kinds of
Speaker 1: inclusion exclusion. But I also like to think about the
Speaker 1: term predatory inclusion. So you can almost always find a
Speaker 1: way to pay for something, but what are the terms
Speaker 1: of that inclusion? So if you think about um, you know,
Speaker 1: most prepaid cards have tremendous fees attached to them. Um.
Speaker 1: You know, you have a fee to every time you
Speaker 1: swipe the card. You have a fee every time you
Speaker 1: put money on it. You have a fee if you
Speaker 1: need to cancel it, you have a monthly maintenance fee, etcetera, etcetera.
Speaker 1: So whereas someone like me with my credit score is
Speaker 1: getting paid every time I pay with my Chase aff
Speaker 1: I reserve, somebody else is actually paying you know they're
Speaker 1: they're in fact not their payment is not at all
Speaker 1: clearing up par um. So I think that we do
Speaker 1: need to look at questions of of inclusion, like can
Speaker 1: you be involved in the economy, but really like what
Speaker 1: are the terms of that include as you enter the economy? Um?
Speaker 1: And how how are they you know, how are these
Speaker 1: systems being monetized? So before we go and we have
Speaker 1: to wrap up, I mean, obviously there are some sort
Speaker 1: of very blatant examples of money as social media. We
Speaker 1: talked about venmo very easy to understand. Our cryptocurrencies are
Speaker 1: social libra, the memo on checks are social. The old
Speaker 1: Western Union and the telegraph. What's in your book what's
Speaker 1: the most sort of surprising social money that you discovered
Speaker 1: or what's the most sort of like weird thing that
Speaker 1: maybe people haven't heard of as much. One thing that
Speaker 1: I think is very interesting. UM is you know, everyone
Speaker 1: knows about Chase Fire Reserve, and I mean your audience
Speaker 1: probably does. And how um when it first came out,
Speaker 1: there was some and you know, various premium cards. There's
Speaker 1: always like drama over if it increases access to premium
Speaker 1: lounges and kind of opens up space to people who
Speaker 1: might not you know, there was a complaint I think
Speaker 1: in the New York Times that was, like the premium
Speaker 1: lounges have become a zoo now that everyone with with
Speaker 1: a particular credit card can get in. But there are
Speaker 1: other cards and other loyalty systems that kind of open
Speaker 1: up access to these like previously hidden or rarefied realms.
Speaker 1: And one of the ones that I think is really
Speaker 1: interesting are UM on their credit cards designed for owner
Speaker 1: operators of trucks, so like truckers, long haul truck drivers
Speaker 1: UM and they and like lots of loyalty geared at
Speaker 1: truck drivers who do in fact ring up quite a
Speaker 1: bit of interchange, which is what pays for the rewards,
Speaker 1: because they're on the road and spending a lot of
Speaker 1: money and swepping their cards many times UM and so
Speaker 1: rather than there being these kind of like premium airport lounges.
Speaker 1: There are premium truck stop gas areas, so if you
Speaker 1: are a have status as a truck driver, you can
Speaker 1: enter certain areas of truck stops that you or I
Speaker 1: don't even know existest that allows you to get gas
Speaker 1: kind of more quickly. Yeah, get access to showers, that
Speaker 1: sort of thing. Yeah, I know, I really want one
Speaker 1: of those cards. Yeah. Well, I think the they're like
Speaker 1: the kind of gas pumps that are geared for like,
Speaker 1: you know, semi trucks. So I don't think that even
Speaker 1: like work with with normal cars. Um, So they're definitely
Speaker 1: not geared for us. And I don't think you want
Speaker 1: to take a shower at a truck stop, um, although
Speaker 1: you might if we're all driving now that we're not
Speaker 1: flying as much anymore, because I show um. And of course,
Speaker 1: because these are business cards, um, because these folks are
Speaker 1: owner operators, they're not as um, they're not, they don't
Speaker 1: face they're not as regulated as heavily as consumer cards,
Speaker 1: so they they do have perhaps higher credit lines than
Speaker 1: someone might qualify for as an individual, they're higher interest rates.
Speaker 1: They can be kind of part of this kind of
Speaker 1: predatory inclusion if people aren't very careful about how they
Speaker 1: manage them. But I did you know, I write about
Speaker 1: an account of a trucker who talks about, you know,
Speaker 1: the kind of loyalty rewards from these trucker cards as
Speaker 1: quote unquote like food stamps for truckers, because they allow
Speaker 1: truckers to access um a shower access and meal access,
Speaker 1: like a rest stop when they need to, even if
Speaker 1: they at the moment don't have the funds. All Right,
Speaker 1: that was awesome, Laana Sports, thanks so much for coming
Speaker 1: back on oudlock. Yeah, thank you, Thanks Launa. I really
Speaker 1: like talking to Lana. I find this like an endlessly
Speaker 1: fascinating subject. I love them. I love the reference to
Speaker 1: Benedict Anderson. I don't know if you've ever read that book,
Speaker 1: but this idea of like print forming the sort of
Speaker 1: conception of like community and nationhood and then thinking about
Speaker 1: what like post print culture and post print money looks
Speaker 1: like it's just sort of a super fascinating thing with
Speaker 1: what I think is probably a lot of implication, many
Speaker 1: significant implications to that. Yeah, I think the idea of
Speaker 1: money being sort of wrapped up in communication, which means
Speaker 1: that it's inevitably wrapped up in communication technology, and it
Speaker 1: sort of changes along with those new technologies as they're developed.
Speaker 1: I think that makes a lot of sense. I also
Speaker 1: really liked her idea of the price of financial inclusion,
Speaker 1: because I think we do think a lot about people
Speaker 1: just being locked out of new payment systems, or even
Speaker 1: people who aren't able to get bank accounts and things
Speaker 1: like that, and we don't often think about the flip
Speaker 1: side of that, which is, you know, when they are included,
Speaker 1: what are the terms of that inclusion, And once they're
Speaker 1: sort of embedded in a particular payment system because of
Speaker 1: the data aspects that we were talking about, does that
Speaker 1: mean that they're locked into it basically forever? Like are
Speaker 1: you always going to be tagged as a person who
Speaker 1: has this particular credit score or a person who lives
Speaker 1: in a particular way, And you know, therefore, for the
Speaker 1: rest of eternity you're going to be getting advertisements for
Speaker 1: Dutch ovens to your example. But you know, if you're
Speaker 1: a poor person, maybe for the rest of your life,
Speaker 1: you're going to be getting pushed loans and financial products
Speaker 1: with a higher interest rate than you would otherwise. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And I thought the question that you asked was I
Speaker 1: had never thought about her answer before about why our
Speaker 1: system is so clunky when it comes to two way money,
Speaker 1: and so why is it, you know, and this idea
Speaker 1: that there is like at one point it was like
Speaker 1: the sort of like fundamental difference between a merchant and
Speaker 1: in a buyer and a purchaser, and that they have
Speaker 1: different need and that different types of merchants run different
Speaker 1: levels of chargeback risks. So presumably there are things there
Speaker 1: there merchants for whom are always dealing with customers trying
Speaker 1: to scam them and trying to get their money back,
Speaker 1: and others for whom not so much, And that that
Speaker 1: sort of like gradation of risk is a very sort
Speaker 1: of like alien concept to the individual. I thought that
Speaker 1: was super interesting and then sort of like helps to
Speaker 1: like sort of re contextualize all these different average by
Speaker 1: like social media companies who like knows so much about
Speaker 1: us to turn us all into both payers and recipients
Speaker 1: of money. Yeah, And I guess the big question is
Speaker 1: whether or not individuals do you start getting risk profiles
Speaker 1: in that sense sort of like that you know that
Speaker 1: Black Mirror episode where everything is determined by like your
Speaker 1: Instagram profile? Do you remember that? Oh? I don't think
Speaker 1: I ever watched that. You know what, can I just
Speaker 1: say I saw the first episode of Black Mirror and
Speaker 1: I got too freaked out by it, and I've never
Speaker 1: watched them Alright, this one would freak you out because
Speaker 1: this one I could see actually happening. Um. But this
Speaker 1: idea that maybe like your social media profile or your
Speaker 1: online profile is eventually going to feed in how you
Speaker 1: are perceived as a financial risk or financial credit, I think,
Speaker 1: I mean, I think to some extent we're already on
Speaker 1: the way to that. Yeah. Well, and also reason the question,
Speaker 1: I don't know, like if you ever read a stuff J. W. Mason,
Speaker 1: he's like an economist at John J Here in the City.
Speaker 1: He makes this really interesting point in some of his writing,
Speaker 1: which is that like our bank account, in this weird way,
Speaker 1: like if you like look at your bank account, you
Speaker 1: have x amount of money in some sort of like
Speaker 1: abstract sense, it's supposed to be some representation of all
Speaker 1: of your historical decisions, right. It's it's this sort of
Speaker 1: number that represents every purchase and every income you've made,
Speaker 1: one minus the other. And so in a way like
Speaker 1: money is all is on some level, this sort of
Speaker 1: like measure of our past selves and then thinking about
Speaker 1: it in terms of like explicitly measuring our social media
Speaker 1: or monitoring our social media is almost like making been
Speaker 1: more explicit what money is attempted to do. I don't
Speaker 1: know if that makes any sense, but no, it does.
Speaker 1: Money is a source of identity. Yeah, yeah, it's it's
Speaker 1: a it's a great subject and even um, there's a
Speaker 1: reason we always like to talk about it. Yeah, there
Speaker 1: definitely is. I'm definitely going to read Lana's book now,
Speaker 1: which is also an audiobook, so maybe I'll be listening
Speaker 1: to it. Okay, should we leave it there? All right,
Speaker 1: let's leave it there. This has been another episode of
Speaker 1: the ad Thoughts Podcast. I'm Tracy Alloway. You can follow
Speaker 1: me on Twitter at Tracy Alloway and I'm Joe Why
Speaker 1: Isn't Though? You can follow me on Twitter at the Stalwart,
Speaker 1: And you should follow our guest on Twitter, Lana Swartz.
Speaker 1: She's at Lana, Lana and Chug out her new book
Speaker 1: New Money, How Money Became Social Media, and be sure
Speaker 1: to follow our producer Laura Carlson. She's at Laura M. Carlson.
Speaker 1: Follow the Bloomberg head of podcast, Francesca Levi at Francesca
Speaker 1: Today and check out all of our podcasts under the
Speaker 1: handle at podcasts. Thanks for listening to