Rai stones are large donut-shaped stones weighing up to 4 tons which were used as currency on the Yap islands in Micronesia for centuries. Because it is hard to move the stones, buying something simply involved agreeing the stone changes ownership and ‘recording’ it in oral history [1277×1703]
by Fuckoff555
11 Comments
>buying something simply involved agreeing the stone changes ownership and ‘recording’ it in oral history
So. . . like Bitcoin?
One of the stories I love is that at some point people were transporting a stone by boat and accidentally dropped it in the ocean, way too deep to get it back or even see it. But since there were multiple witnesses that the stone still existed somewhere on the seafloor, it remained valid currency.
The first nft?
Historical NFTs lol
Ye olde cheque for a a beeg torus.
If you can’t move them, can someone explain me how this is useful as a currnency? I mean if ownership is orally transmitted , doesn’t using a currency make it a useless step?
Mr. Krabs’s first dime!
And the stones that were transported by O’keefe (an Irish sailor) who settled down in Yap are worth less because they were easier to transport (he used European ships)
Tell me when
I wonder what the exchange rate is from a Rai stones to a Ningi or a Triganic Pu…
My kids preschool teacher was from Yap and she had 2 of the real small ones in her classroom. And she owned 2 large ones on Yap. The small ones, one was given to her when she was born the other when she was married. She knew the lineage of all 4, who owned them and for how long.