As someone who's read Lyn for a while, there wasn't too much "new" here. Strangely for it's length it felt like a cliff notes of some of her other pieces on bitcoin and petrodollars.

That said there is plenty here that people can engage with in good faith without reading it all word for word.

I've read Lyn a couple times - I can't quite figure out their general position. Seems somewhat pro crypto and also all for deep dive in the financial markets / some kind of contrarian position. You think that's fairly accurate?

I can't also tell if it's all somewhat promo for members area. As an economist, trying to understand the incentives.

FWIW I like the research.

I've always felt like Lyn asks 5 whys, and then possibly, how can we use this to make money. I'm not a subscriber so I dunno how profitable she is, but I think she usually tries not to push an angle dogmatically in most of her public writing which can be refreshing these days.

That kind of feels like how I read it too. Thanks

From the couple of articles I read: Wants to be pro-crypto but also objective and rational it.

This resonates as well. I appreciate the effort on objectiveness

Took me about 40 min lol

I have followed this writer for some time, always pretty good and VERY detailed.

If you don't know about bitcoin / historic currency, it's a great read. Covers the basis.

Read it beginning to end first time I clicked the link. Yeah, it took a while. She summarizes several fascinating concepts in a fairly approachable manner.

Knew a lot of this already, picked up some new examples I hadn't heard of before. Feel like it's a good article for sharing with older-generation family etc.

What if somebody had read the article before it was submitted to HN?

I didn't read the article, but I scrolled through it until I found the place where he answers the question in the headline:

What is money?

Well, the answer to that question ties into the difference between currency and money. Currency is some other entity’s liability, and they can choose whether or not to honor that particular liability. Money is something that is intrinsically valuable in its own right to other entities, and that has no counterparty risk if you custody it yourself (although it may have pricing risk related to supply and demand). In other words, Russia’s gold is money; their FX reserves are currency. The same is true for other countries.

> I found the place where he answers the question in the headline

The author is a woman.

Nowadays that might not be enough information to select the appropriate pronoun. ;)

And yet, a pronoun was selected (incorrectly).

> Distrust any comment on the content that appears before the post is at least 3 hours old

people who've studied economics formally already have a good grasp of what money is; as they read through the first few paragraphs of this they can see by its meandering where it may be headed. I don't plan to finish it.

This is fine. Only read what seems interesting. But... should you be voting based on what you think the article will probably say?

I didn't vote, but my comment was in response to something that says "don't trust comments". If you see something off in the first paragraph, it's fair game to comment on.

>It is long. 23,000 words long. wordstotime.com says it will take roughly 3 hours to read.

That's if you read out loud (23,000 @ 140wpm = 2:45 hours). If you silent read, you can get around 240wpm (1:36 hours).

FWIW, I read the article couple of weeks ago and engaged in a healthy debate with Lyn on Twitter.

Might need to become an automated check before comments are allowed on HN articles.

Imagine trying to comment on an academic research paper with a very clear abstract, just to be locked for 5 hours because of the 50 pages of the actual paper.

I once saw a 5 page conference paper with a 120 page appendix.

I admit I didn't read the appendix.