Hi. I think you're locked in a tautology. If "transactional utility is the price of money itself" then it can only be determined in relation to that which it prices itself by, i.e. its own unit of currency or an equivalent. Assume for a moment that this "transactional utility" amounts to one billion US dollars. What is the 'value' of one billion US dollars independent of the value of one US dollar? What is the 'value' of one US dollar? One and one billion are literally just numbers. They do not have any inherent value in and of themselves, and they certainly doesn't soak up a mysterious quality called 'value' just because we put a symbol in front of them
I didn't quite understand what you meant to say
Nevertheless, it looks like you trying to present it as a tautology when in fact there should be none. Transactional utility is a real utility objectively arising from the convenience of using money over barter. Money doesn't spoil like crops, you can easily transfer value with it, exchange an arbitrary amount of some goods for it and then exchange it for an arbitrary amount of other goods at the time when you see it most appropriate. All these qualities (and a lot of others that I didn't mention) make up what is called transactional utility and what essentially makes something into money (since transactional utility is as inherent quality of money). And as such, it can be separated from money (money token) and assessed in money (money tokens), just like any other utility of something useful can be valued in money
Hi. OK, let's go back to the round chunks of shiny metal. Do you accept that an inert metal is an inert metal and the mere fact that a group of people decide that an inert metal will serve as their 'currency' does not mysteriously transform that inert metal into something else? It remains, as it always was, just an inert metal does it not? It does not 'store' anything other than a perception and, in this sense, our perception that it 'stores' a mysterious quality called 'value' is actually a misperception whereby we literally attribute human values to a mere object. For example, if I were to melt down one of these round chunks of shiny metal and create an idol in the form of an animal, would that idol become a 'store' of something called 'divinity' if I began to worship it? If I were to melt down a large number of these round chunks of shiny metal and create lots of idols, would I be able to 'transfer' this 'divinity' to other people? Or would I simply be deluding myself and others?
There is no such thing as 'value', only the illusion of it. We are literally playing a numbers game and pretending that a self-referential symbol actually means something. A symbol is just a symbol though. Can you breathe a symbolic representation of air? Can you drink it? Can you do anything with it at all without pretending that it is something more than what it actually is?
Imagine that a global currency were to emerge and replace all existing currencies. What would the 'value' of that currency be in the absence of any other currency to establish equivalence? This gives the game away, doesn't it? The 'value' of one unit of currency would be equal to itself and mean nothing whatsoever.
If we stop pretending that things and digital abstractions have 'value' then we see the futility of pretending that they have to be issued as debt or earned in any conventional sense. Instead, we can pretend that they mean something else altogether and stop playing the numbers game. What I am saying is that we do not need others to delude us when we can delude ourselves in a way that benefits everyone, not just a minority. We do not need governments or banks or even bitcoin miners to create symbols on our behalf. We can create them ourselves.
HS