Crime Against Humanity: Hands Up and Give Us Your Wallet, 2

When money has intrinsic value, that intrinsic value belongs to its bearer: possession is property.
When money has no intrinsic value, but physicallly still exists, independent from the agreement about its value, the agreement about its ownership is roughly the same than that of the money with intrinsic value: possession is property.
Things begin to change with deposits and the fractional reserve drift: a third party interposes, claiming and hogging the role of guarantor – but it would be better to call it the role of monopolistic holder of the holy scriptures: when you entrust your physical money you surrender its possession, so what do you receive in exchange to attest that money not in your possession anymore is nonetheless your property? Some form of certificate attesting it. Certified etymologically means made certain, and this implies a statement made by someone and acknowledged by others. Now you have a third party interposing, accepted as authoritative in attesting your property.

There exists the concept of public registry: the property of certain things like cars and houses is certified by an entry in it to that effect, rather than by possession alone. The conbination of this function of attesting property with other complementary functions such as law enforcement is supposed to be entrusted to and performed by a public body at the service of citizens.

We will see later on how this “supposed to” is not to be taken for granted. For now, let’s consider the possibility that this is no longer the case in abstract terms. It may sound a bit more academic than real−life now, but it is fit to mention it here for the sake of completeness as one of the obvious tools of moneypulators is controlling the public functions; as to its progress and full scope, we will see them later on.