This paper is a reply to Barry Ickes' critique of my paper “Trust versus Illusion: What is Driving Demonetization in Russia?” in which I show that the data reject Barry Ickes' Virtual Economy explanation of barter in Russia in favor of an institutional explanation based on the lack of trust. JEL Classification: D20, G30, O10, P30

A fascinating subject can make a great book, and money is one of the topics that have captured the public mind and the intellectual interest of philosophers and scientists alike. The recent financial collapse (circa 2008), and particularly its reverberations in the European Union, has energized the debate around money and led to a new wave of publications of books and articles on the subject. T...

We analyze current P2P credit systems in the light of modern economic theories, devoting particular attention to currency based ones, and argue their unsuitability to the characteristics of P2P networks. We then propose a robust, efficiently scalable barter system with short transactions and wealth storage, classically considered the two most important features of currency based economies.