From Barter to Libra Do Money and Cryptocurrencies Lie Along the Same Evolutionary Line?

A spectre is haunting World: the idea that money is nothing but an illusion, a thing no more real than a fiction we tell each other and we have decided to believe in. But behind the scenes, someone is quetioning this story and something is happening. Every day a new cryptocurrency is born. Among those that have been recently created, the most important is undoubtedly Libra, sponsored by Facebook, which puts itself forward as a real international currency and has aroused both curiosity and concern in the banking, political and institutional world. The change seems unstoppable and is destined to significantly affect the daily life of each of us. The real question is: are cryptocurrencies money? Can they aspire to replace in all respects traditional national currencies? Is there a single evolutionary line that begins with bartering, in the mists of time, and ends with Libra, in the glittering digital age? Or are cryptocurrencies a different and temporary phenomenon, perhaps destined to carve out a small niche in the global digital ecosystem, but nothing more? In this paper, I will try to answer these questions by adopting a new perspective compared to the traditional technical and regulatory approach, observing the phenomenon from a historical, social and macroeconomic perspective. I will conclude by pointing out that money is nothing more than a register of public debt (coins and banknotes are a means of updating the register), which was at first centralised, then decentralised, and is now distributed thanks to blockchain technology. Cryptocurrencies are therefore money for all intents and purposes.