In Matt Levine's latest Money Stuff newsletter he talks about how money is really just a social construct. In his words, money is "a way to keep track of what society thinks you deserve in terms of goods and services."

But over the years, we have learned that it can be manipulated through the actions of central banks and other authorities. This, he argues, has become more obvious in the last 15 or so years. Which is one of the reasons why people continue to argue that cryptocurrencies are both a good thing and something we need more of.

Crypto is neutral, or at least that is the intent. But at the same time, it too remains a social construct. Cryptocurrencies have value because that is what we have collectively decided to layer on top of their math-based blockchains -- a global market cap of nearly $2 trillion.

Ironically, the more value we ascribe to them the less neutral they are likely to become. Because the more they ingratiate themselves into mainstream society, the more likely they are to get regulated. But Matt's overarching argument is that this is in fact a good thing.

Monies exist through webs of interdependencies that generally keeps us all in check by encouraging "prosocial behavior." So the fact that authorities can intervene, when needed, isn't a bug, it is a feature. It means that when you clearly misbehave, the world can punish you by doing things like freezing your foreign reserves.

Matt Levine's latest column is a good follow-up to yesterday's post about Zillow exiting the algorithmic home-buying business. In it, he talks about the differences between being a market maker and being a trader of homes. Part of his argument is that if you're a pure market maker then, in theory, you don't really care about where home values are going. Because either way, you're just earning a spread.

Here's an excerpt:

A market maker is someone who buys and sells an asset in order to profit from the spread, not someone who accurately forecasts the price of an asset six months from now. End users want to buy or sell stocks or bonds or houses, they want to do it quickly at a predictable price, so they go to a market maker who will provide that service. The market maker buys from sellers and sells from buyers and does its best to match them up; ideally it buys an asset from a seller and resells it to a buyer within a fairly short time. It collects a “spread” from the buyer and seller: It buys from the buyer at a bit less than the fair market price, and sells to the seller at a bit more than the fair market price, because it is providing them a valuable service, the service of “immediacy” or “liquidity,” the service of always being available to buy or sell.