My First Million
The best business ideas come from noticing what's working and doing it better, faster, or for a different audience.
Three-Stage Currency Adoption Framework
A currency must pass through three distinct stages to become truly functional: store of value, medium of exchange, and unit of account.
How It Works
Each stage requires increasing levels of collective belief and adoption. Stage 1 (store of value) requires people to believe it will hold value tomorrow. Stage 2 (medium of exchange) requires widespread acceptance for transactions. Stage 3 (unit of account) means pricing things directly in that currency.
Components
Stage 1: Establish store of value through collective belief in future worth
Stage 2: Enable medium of exchange through widespread merchant adoption
Stage 3: Achieve unit of account status where prices are natively expressed
When to Use
When evaluating whether a new monetary technology will succeed, or when building financial products around emerging currencies.
When Not to Use
Don't apply to non-monetary assets or when dealing with established fiat currencies that already completed all stages.
Anti-Patterns to Avoid
Example
“Bitcoin has largely completed stage 1 with $60k price and hundreds of millions of wallets, is beginning stage 2 with payment processors, but hasn't reached stage 3 since prices aren't quoted in Bitcoin natively.”