"Pig" comes from the Old English word for clay which was pygg. Money was kept in ceramic jars so it wasn't a big leap to piggy bank. The word "bank" comes from Italy where money lenders used benches or banks in a public square. When a banker went out of business his bench was smashed. He was broke. Breaking the bank extended to ceramic piggy banks. The oldest clay bank (15th C) in the form of a pig was found in Java—shattered but no money nearby.
The pigs of our Pyramid Scheme present the old story of a penny saved. What does it say about the state of our relationship with money when, in a single day of collecting plastic from a beach on the Gulf Coast, we found five plastic piggy banks washed ashore?
As new financial instruments flourish—from electronic trading, to credit cards, to Bit Coin and Ripple, to DIY person-to-person trading, the financial world is being "hacked" to illuminate new ways of looking at money. We present Pyramid Scheme as a new way of looking at an old story.
