Comment by yetihehe

I think that money would only be used to send messages, as a way to prevent excessive spam. There needs to be some limitation. In whatsapp it's unique number or phones. Once you send too much spam from one number, it's burned. If you have anonymous network, how do you otherwise prevent from making new accounts for sending spam? If it is invite-only network, then it's pretty small problem.

I don't think relaying messages would require that much power and as you said, "You join the mesh because you want to use it yourself".