Read Debt by Graeber so you can stop believing in the myth of barter. Then think again.
Barter is literally my life. I teach other people’s children about life and Computer Science in order to buy potatoes. The children’s parents make medicine and build houses to pay for their children’s education. Is your point that barter is about goods, whereas most people provide services (time, labour?)
Or perhaps you mean that the majority of the economy in terms of wealth is engaged in the investment of capital, and we potato eaters are but a percentage of a percentage?
The book says that this barter method is almost never used, and instead people tend to keep track of favors and things they owe in a more vague way. And every now and then, these debts are settled in a communal fashion. But barter is not used.
So the farmer just asks for the book and gets it. And when autumn comes, and the bookstore owner feels like having an apple, he just goes to the farmer and asks for some. But the two transactions are not really linked.
Of course I (teacher) don’t buy potatoes by teaching the farmer’s children Dijkstra.
Instead of bartering we chooses to track our debts. Using Bitcoin as a cryptographically secure distributed debt tracker sounds great.
But Bitcoin right now feels like a bunch of technology enthusiasts have blessed the world with such a debt tracker while also saying ”btw you collectively owe us $630,000,000,000 worth of stuff”.
I'm not sure where on the globe you are at, but where I am from, groups of friends buy rounds of beers at the bar. You do not keep track of whose turn it is to pay the round or whether someone is buying more expensive stuff, but since you are friends you make sure things are fair over time. But implicitly, not tracking numbers and accounts.
And Graeber argues that that is actually the method that predates currency. Not barter.
I fully agree on the hilariously large "primordial" debt we somehow owe the early miners.
The first few chapters show that historically money predates barter, not the other way around. And that money was born as "I owe you" notes issued by the government.
I know of only one comment [1] Graeber made about bitcoin, and it's too late to ask him now.
[1]: https://twitter.com/davidgraeber/status/990857460176089088
digital technology only makes barter more easy and accessible.
converting every trade into numbers and back is an outmoded method, which i think will become less used with time.
But it is a recurring theme in history, and most (all?) monetary systems were traded for this alternative within 1000 years. For me, in Western Europe, this was 500 years ago between roughly 1000-1500. The churches were fitted with gold roofs, and because of the lack of coinage and currency, most people lived their lives with this alternative approach, only rarely coming across money, currency, accounting and debt.