When you have commodity money, the value of the money is derived from the value of the commodity. You don’t get to assign arbitrarily higher values to the money because the market determines the value. But yes, all speculative assets typically have a higher extrinsic value compared with their intrinsic value but I don’t believe that has anything to do with it being a medium of exchange or not. That is just supply and demand.

Gold is a commodity and you can create a currency that is backed by a commodity so you aren’t actually trading the commodity itself.

That is not true, for the vast majority of the history of money it was based on a commodity that was valuable in its own sense. It is only in the last century that we have begun experimenting with currencies that are not pegged to the value of a commodity.

Cryptocurrencies derived their value from being a network of users (metcalfe’s law) so they are more like a commodity money. Thing about something like Meta, which has a valuation in the trillions despite its physical assets not be worth nearly that and its functionality as a website being easily replicated on an alternative platform. The users are what is valuable.

Hmmm anyone remember when Andrew Yang was running for president and said that data was the new oil and that people should own the content they put on social media?

Cybersecurity is definitely in demand in Canada but we are also going through a housing affordability crisis and generally our tech salaries are lower in compared with the US. You would almost certainly be taking a step back in standard of living unless you swing a remote work situation from a US employer.

I recently left a WFH only company. The environment was toxic and there was definitely some insecurity on the part of management regarding worker productivity. There was a much larger emphasis on constantly showing to management what you were working on and proving you were using your work day productively.

It was a culture shift I didn’t adapt well to and left.