Business to the Buddha

Tag: Trust

  • Trust, PNBFraud and Cryptocurrency







    It was a monthly routine of some of my friends of our engineering days that can explain one Professor Mankad’s statement – “Money is what is accepted as money”. Some of my friends, used to be penniless for last one week to ten days every month. Possibly it is a common phenomenon of current generation students. So for about last ten days these friends of ours used to borrow from us. A couple of times I gave, returns used to be few and far between. I and few other “venture capitalists” stopped lending these friends. In these trying times, the borrower friends came up with an idea – whenever the received a cheque (rarely demand draft) – from home it used to take three or more days to realize those – they used to borrow against it.

    Let me try to explain it with example, say Neerav got a cheque of INR 2500 from home, he will show that and borrow money (say INR 1000) from Yogesh and possibly INR 1500 from Pravin and another INR 1000 from Prateek. Now Neerav has borrowed INR 3500 against a cheque of 2500. All of the lenders used to be under an impression that within next five days or so we will get our money back as Neerav has got INR 2500. We used to accept that cheque as guarantee of timely return. “We” accepted cheque in “Neerav’s name” as a money. Thankfully none of the Neerav’s defaulted on our outstanding.

    We have been living in a very nicely woven cobweb of currency and economy for at least last two centuries. Currency and thus “money” is the biggest fraud happening around us. Be the gold standard (relatively better method of “value”) to fiat currency. What is money? The question Professor Mankad asked us in our MBA class about 8 years back is still very relevant and I have been revisiting it time and again. When he asked such question, we started answering coin, currency notes etc etc. His one line response was – “Money is what is accepted as money”. Yes that is true, money is what is accepted as money, as we used to accept cheque without known Neerav has kind of pleaded same cheque to 5 different lenders!

    Bitcoin logoEarlier, I wrote on trust as a foundation – Currency for the future. QUOTE from there Let us flip the coin and say “Trust” is the currency. What would happen? Those who have hoards of currency may be the most bankrupt people on the earth. Perhaps, a business of trading of trust would start (Bomday Trust Exchange or National Trust Exchange). Would the world be a different place then when currency would be mutual trust (well not necessarily Mutual such as DLF and Robert Vadra. UNQUOTE. This I wrote in 2012, at that time Cryptocurrency (example bitcoin) was not commonplace – well even I did not know about it. I had a different measure and calculation for the currency – money what is it?

    However, lesser than the intangible concept of Trust that I thought, we have a better believable system evolving these days – cryptocurrency. If we keep on seeing the meltdown of 2008, NPA frauds of India and many other such scams from the politicians and their accomplice etc. we will soon accept the bitcoin or other such more reliable systems for transactions. Crypto is putting pressure because administrations and regulatory authorities will lose control on the economy. With the control also they are not making any good; at least if we see India – a former FM and his son facing trial but our system is unable to conclude the trial or many scammers settling out of India.

    I am bit hopeful on blockchain, it is more reliable (difficult to fudge) and open as against the lenders like Punjab National Bank who can decide on their fancy on the money of other depositors. Blockchain is the way for not only currencies but for many other things including contracts and agreements. Hopefully then we will have a more balanced society and “trust” as digital money. Only fear is these “connected” bureaucrats, politicians and their page 3 friends, clique will first get their ill gotten money put in these digital currencies and probably try to make it murky too.

    Disclaimer – story of engineering days is authentic, names of my friends are changed, I didn’t have any batchmate in Engineering named Nirav.

  • Currency for the future?







    In his class, Prof Mankad asked us “what is money?” He answered – “Money is what is accepted as money”. Very apt definition. Here I am taking small freedom to change it a bit. I am changing the word “accepted” to “trusted”. Of course trust is a very heavy word. We have built a concept “of money” on trust. The question is where is trust? On a lighter note – There was a time when banks did not trust each other (recession of 2008). I have heard this idiom – “put your mouth where the money is.” Should money be replaced with “trust”.

    I was watching 3 idiots last Sunday and thought that kids like Rancho (character played by Amir Khan) – who could solve problems of class 10th while studying in class 6th – are not that rare in India. You go to Super 30 in Bihar, or any institute in Kota (Aakash, Bansal etc) you would encounter many such kids. Then what happens? Why don’t we see such extraordinary kids as stars of tomorrow? Because in future all these kids realize that the only measurement stick (metric) this world has is – Money! See the video of Staffi Graph – how much money do you have? Well, I am not blaming Staffi for that. This is just a representative video of our society. The measurement of success is how much money do you have? Not how did you get it. Also, the measurement is not how satisfied or happy you are?

    [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PlA_hL3NyyU]

    When these extraordinary kids get out of college, are paid enough and more so that they do “what the company wants them to do”, not what they would want to do. Most of them choose to accept that offer because measurement metric for the society is – Money.

    Let us flip the coin and say “Trust” is the currency. What would happen? Those who have hoards of currency may be the most bankrupt people on the earth. Perhaps, a business of trading of trust would start (Bomday Trust Exchange or National Trust Exchange). Would the world be a different place then when currency would be mutual trust (well not necessarily Mutual such as DLF and Robert Vadra ;))

    The day I started writing this blog I also had a brief discussion with Mr Shreekant Shiralkar and he was of the opinion – Money becomes immaterial after a certain time, what you do, what satisfaction you get from work and the trust you build is important. When he said Trust his thoughts were different compared to what I am presenting here. However, what I feel is the currency for future should be trust you build, the good you do to the society and how satisfied and happy you are.

  • Irony!







    I remember an opening of Prof Mankad’s class. He asked ‘What is money?…’ and so on and so forth. Money is what is accepted as money. The trust of acceptance gives value to money. Irony is this TRUST. This concept e.g. money creates maximum MISTRUST. The concept which, I believe, we think gives power, empowers us, creates fear of losing it. Money which should give us some security creates insecurity. Is not it an irony?

    I heard someone (If I recalled correctly it was Osho) saying – opposites are always together, if opposites are not together their value is nothing. White is white and does not hold much value if Black does not exist. Lord Rama and his values were/are magnified by none other than the existence of Ravana. If Jesus were not crucified we might not even have found records of him or might not have bothered about his greatness. For safety and security of our ‘Nation’ we buy/make arsenals and prepare for wars, is not it an irony?

    We avoid

    WAR by aggrandizing weapons
    Trust on Money, which creates lots of, perhaps maximum, Mistrust
    Good people are good because their are bad one’s out there.