Comment by beefield

> An even stronger statement I am willing to make is that no one person correctly and fully understands the financial system.

This.

> So, once you accept that there is no "correct" answer to how the financial system and how markets work,

And this.

If someone tells you simple truths that you think make intuitively sense, just run away.

Money/Finance is a damn slippery concept and when you dig into it, you find that everything turns out super abstract and answer to almost everything is "It depends."

But to the very original question, here are some quick/dirty pointers what to look for:

1. A Classic economics approach book. Money is unit of measure, store of value, and medium of exchange etc.

2. A discussion about how (modern) money actually is debt. In a very fundamental sense.

3. History of money/banking. How things got from barter (questionable, agreed) to metal money to gold standard to Bretton Woods to free floating fiat currencies. History of financial crises.

4. Some coprorate finance. Equity, debt, derivatives. Why/how banks are really weird corporations from the balance sheet point of view (massive leverage, that is). What is arbitrage, how you price options.

5. Practical finance, ie. interesting stories. E.g. Nick Leeson, Michael Lewis, Satyajit Das.

After all that you may start to have a hunch how little you actually understand so far, but then you start to have tools to build your own mental model.

What you really should not read is goldbugs and cryptofolks stories. They are just one massive Dunning-Kruger bunch and will waste your time.