What is money, really?

Position Clarity. Directional education only, not financial or investment advice, and not personalized to your circumstances. Position Clarity is not registered with any Canadian securities regulator. Speak to a licensed professional before acting on anything you learn here. On the history: the common story that money was invented to fix barter is not well supported by the anthropological record (see David Graeber, Debt: The First 5,000 Years, 2011); the "money as shared memory" framing follows Narayana Kocherlakota, "Money is Memory," Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, 1998, and the Bank of Canada's public explainers on the functions of money. Content last reviewed July 2026. More at the series home and the free interactive tools.