It’s valuable because barter economies aren’t real and don’t work. All the alternatives you mention are difficult to transport, not fungible, or not scarce, so they won’t work as a currency. Either we revert back to gift economies where distribution of goods happens within a community and follows cultural rather than economic rules, or the market settles on a currency for standardized arbitrary transactions between strangers that has the necessary properties of a currency.
It’s valuable because barter economies aren’t real and don’t work. All the alternatives you mention are difficult to transport, not fungible, or not scarce, so they won’t work as a currency. Either we revert back to gift economies where distribution of goods happens within a community and follows cultural rather than economic rules, or the market settles on a currency for standardized arbitrary transactions between strangers that has the necessary properties of a currency.