2024/12/20 by Scott M. Fitzpatrick · 1 voice
Arts and Humanities · #Cultural Heritage Management and Preservation #Maritime and Coastal Archaeology
paper · pdf · doi:10.1002/sea2.12343
openalex publication_date 2024/12/20 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
I read with great interest how the Nordic krone, Venezuelan petro, and New Russian ruble alternative currencies emerged as a result of the US dollar's crash in 2040. As an archeologist and scholar of more traditional forms of currency (what might more accurately be termed exchange valuables)—and coupled with the knowledge of what has passed in the sixty years since these currencies developed—I would like to provide a temporal perspective on why the compendium of monetary instruments owes part of its origin to legacy units of exchange, their ultimate transformation due to various economic and sociopolitical factors, and climate-driven reasons behind the rise of the Oceanic vaka (VKA) digital unit. As noted in Mandirola's (2025) brochure on the subject, “money is not neutral” and is “an active agent in creating the ways in which wealth is generated, circulated, and distributed.” As a reminder, it is worth pointing out a much-discussed topic in economic theory and anthropology, and that is how money—so fundamental in state-level societies across human history—became a critical and integral piece of political economies (see, e.g., Davies, 2002; Pitluck et al., 2018; Weatherford, 1997). While space here does not allow for a full review of the myriad concepts and variations that have prevailed over the last few thousand years, suffice to say that money must fulfill three basic criteria: The note or coin has to be (a) a medium of exchange with a set value that can be used to pay for things or services, (b) a store of value that avoids the issue of both parties needing to desire goods or services in a trade scenario while also retaining purchasing power over time, and (c) a measure of value that assures that the unit of account can serve as a common denomination and has a relative measure of worth. The three alternative currencies described by Mandirola (2025) all served to try to solve—with some degree of success—how they could become both economically stable (i.e., reducing volatility in the markets) and profitable after US dollar transactions became transparent and traceable vis-à-vis the Honest Currencies program. This seemingly well-intended philosophical facet of financial engineering, at least on the surface, had some unintended effects that led to skyrocketing unemployment and the deportation of migrant workers on whom the American agricultural sector relied and from whose loss it subsequently never recovered. Along with the decline of the dollar in international reserves and investors no longer accepting US currency, the economy collapsed. The development of these new alternative currencies in response to the US dollar's demise needed to address several major concerns. These included removing or severely inhibiting the illicit tampering of each currency while ensuring government solvency. The results were the development of vastly different systems, each couched within the sociocultural peculiarities inherent across Scandinavia, Venezuela, and Russia. In essence, these three new alternative currencies achieved their goals until 2062, when a major phenomenon began to arise and changed the optics of monetary policy for most nations. This was a direct outgrowth of forced retreat and emigration due to climate-induced sea level rise, forcing a greater emphasis on living alternatives for those displaced along the world's coastal margins. During the mid-2010s, seasteading (i.e., habitable floating islands) became an increasingly popular and effective means of challenging political authority (Quirk & Friedman, 2017) while ensuring economic viability for those living under oppressive regimes, such as in Venezuela and Russia. It also allowed people across a broad spectrum of economic classes to regain or attain some of the autonomy that had been persecuted in their home nations. These habitable and movable structures, most of which were mass-produced and quite sophisticated, included built-in desalinization, waste management, and recycling systems; aerial and submarine drones; deployable purse seiners to capture seafood; and a combination of solar power, sails, and hydroelectric motors to harvest renewable energy sources to facilitate movement across large bodies of water. Similar to the floating cities found today—and not unlike the mega cruise ships popular in the mid-21st century, prior to massive avian influenza outbreaks (but without the immense multistory structures that were controlled by a single company or country)—these seasteading units could be autonomous or joined with others to form multimodule sea villages comprising tens or hundreds of separate domiciles. The impetus for these was clearly inspired by the earliest seafaring peoples, who crossed larger bodies of water thousands of years ago in search of new homes in response to overpopulation, a lack of resources, and/or autocratic rulers (Figure 1). These early traditional floating villages typically involved lashing canoes to each other and/or larger bamboo platforms and were once quite common across the Indo-Pacific. These not only became an effective way to facilitate trade but also created aquatic communities and established a level of autonomy that was completely movable and malleable. Source: Photograph by Damion Sailors Source: Photograph by Ashley Meredith Source: Photograph by the author Source: Muhammad Haris, Wikimedia Commons Source: Seasteading Institute Source: Seasteading Institute It is perhaps no surprise, then, that over time, some of the more unusual and innovative forms of exchange valuables (i.e., commodity currency) occurred in the watery realm of the Pacific, which covers one-third of the world's surface area and contains thousands of islands. The remoteness and isolation of many island groups, such as Hawai'i and the atolls of Micronesia, forced early inhabitants circa 1500–3000 years ago to create trade linkages with other islanders so that they could acquire needed or desired resources, find marriage partners, and assist with catastrophes (sometimes called the rescue effect). The disparate nature of some resources in the Pacific, notably pearl and Spondylus shells manufactured into beads or other objects, led to these becoming highly prized. In other places, like the Indian Ocean and West Africa, cowry shells became extremely valuable. The historical and symbolic importance of cowries cannot be understated. In Ghana, the national currency is the cedi, which translates to “cowry.” Arguably the most famous example of portable object exchange in the Pacific, and notable in its own right on a global scale, is the stone money (rai) of Yap. For centuries before European contact (ca. 1200–1500 CE), the Yapese of western Micronesia traveled hundreds of miles over open ocean to the Palauan archipelago to carve disks of limestone, a relatively scarce resource not found in Yap. These disks were brought back on canoes or rafts and used in a variety of social and economic transactions. In the 1800s, Euro-Americans became involved with the transport of laborers and rai on larger ships using metal tools; stone money disks thus increased in size and number, leading to de facto inflation. Astonishingly, some of these disks exceeded two to three meters in diameter and weighed more than five or six metric tons (Fitzpatrick, 2008; Hazell & Fitzpatrick, 2006), though smaller disks carved precontact using shell and stone tools were considered much more valuable. An interesting facet of this exchange was that the stones, once brought to Yap, were rarely or ever moved again. To keep track of ownership, the Yapese kept an oral ledger among community members and later transposed this to a digital blockchain network (i.e., the Yapese Digital Ledger; YDL) that was accessible only by the high chiefs in the Council of Pilung. Even those rai lost offshore in rough seas during transport were considered so valuable that they could still be exchanged. It has been argued that these attributes, particularly the lack of a need for physical ownership of stone money for them to have value, may have been the impetus and inspiration for Bitcoin and its use of blockchain technology (Fitzpatrick & McKeon, 2020; Nakamoto, 2008) (Figure 2). Source: Photograph by the author Source: Gillilland (1975) Source: Photograph by the author Source: Photograph courtesy of Brad Holland Source: Photograph by the author In the 60 or so years since the failed Honest Currency program, seasteading has emerged as a prolific, sustainable, and politically influential force by establishing newly formed social groups, known as aquahives, that comprise independent, interlocking residential units that are free from any national government oversight outside of a nation's respective exclusive economic zone. While early seafaring societies often bartered to acquire needed goods or services given their smaller and mostly egalitarian nature, these modular aquahives could at times reach up to a thousand or more individual family and commerce units. This became even more critical with sea level rise drowning the world's coastlines. Seasteading provided a way for islanders to stay connected to what remained of their homeland, but with the flexibility to move if and when necessary. However, an immediate concern for all seasteaders regardless of location was how to also ensure financial flexibility after leaving their homelands and renouncing citizenship. This required a stable, digital alternative currency so that funds were easily accessible and transferable, but also potentially attractive to investors outside of the seasteading movement. Cryptocurrencies were one option, but the massive requirements for electricity and computing power were beyond the immediate capabilities of seasteaders even when harnessing the combined energy storage of larger aquahives, and keeping a crypto mining farm landlocked would have also defeated the purpose of seasteading autonomy. The tremendous growth of seasteading that emerged from different nations and dialects also necessitated a monetary unit that could be used within and between all participant groups and those with whom they interacted. This new currency was termed the Oceanic vaka, a Polynesian word for “canoe,” in deference to the exceptional seafaring skills of Pacific Islanders, who settled the most remote patches of land on earth. In a twist of irony, it was the ancient numismatists of Yap—with their tradition of carving and moving large limestone disks of stone money and their history of interconnections with smaller atoll groups as part of the ancient sawei exchange system—who became the centralized banking hub to which the VKA was tethered. In the 1930s, the Japanese administration had counted more than 13,000 rai in Yap, though an island-wide inventory conducted by archeologists in 2044 revealed only 3554 still intact. Their value, roughly akin to how the value of diamonds was assessed (cut, color, clarity, and carats [weight/size])—but importantly for the Yapese, also according to each stone's pedigree—was integrated into the YDL. From this, one hundred million VKA currency units were divided and unequally distributed among the total rai inventory based on their five uniquely assigned attributes. Although rai as a medium of exchange did not have nonmonetary uses, like gold did, their rarity and pedigrees dating back centuries were sufficient to help stone money retain a high level of demand on the antiquities market. The upside was price stability, whereby there was no feasible way for seasteaders (or governments) to inflate prices by expanding supply, though the downside was that the Yapese were highly unlikely to sell rai. This was not a strict monetary policy, however, and the Yap state government sold one rai each year to the highest bidder, often generating more than triple its VKA value. The revenue generated served to support all Yapese government services, with the remaining 50% reintroduced into the digital chain. As such, VKA digital units became not only an established currency but the preferred monetary unit among coastal cities with seasteading ports of manufacture and repair.