“I cannot figure out why so many people are mean to virtual currency, (after all) currencies at the very beginning are virtual.” Said Gao Xiaosong in the latest episode of Xiaoshuo (literally Morning Call), a Chinese version of Conan O’Brien’s Tonight Show, and it even might remind viewers of Late Night with David Letterman.

Gao Xiaosong is a Chinese Celebrity noted for being a songwriter and director. He also takes the position of Chairman of Alibaba Entertainment Strategic Committee, and co-founder of Alibaba Music Group; his latest but also most successful identity is a talk show host.

Premiered in March 2012, his Xiaoshuo, a video column talks about things over the world including movies, humanities, history and social phenomena with interesting anecdotes here and there. Xiaoshuo is crowned as the No. 1 online Talk Show sweeping all the talk show awards in China. It receives the highest sponsorships ever in China for a talk show, and the highest accumulated viewership of over 850 million in the world;

“The essence of currency is not gold or silver, but lies in social consensus. It is exactly currency if it has exchange value. In this sense, I cannot get clear why so many people criticize virtual currency, (after all) currencies at the very beginning are virtual.”

In Gao’s view, the history of human beings represents the history of currency, as it is closely integrated with human development. The true nature of currency is based on the rule of law, credit and circulation.

Citing an example of primitive currency to illustrate it: locals in the Caroline Islands of the Pacific Ocean agree to take the stones from another island as currency for exchange, this is when people reach the consensus that they can use the stones for recording and totaling transactions, for example, 30 per cent of the stones belongs to Mr. X, and 50 per cent to Mr. Y.

One day, a rich man on the island, gets a large stone by transactions, and he wants to have the stone moved home from the island where the “stone currency” stores. Unfortunately, the ship carrying the stone suddenly sank, leaving the stone quietly lying under the sea. But all people of the island agree that the stone undersea is the property of the rich man and could be traded. This is the same case with bitcoin. And both of them are featured by scarcity and community consensus. Bitcoin can be traded without any third-party, while stones used in the island later may be censored by banks as trusted third party if the island becomes bigger resided with more people…

Released last Friday on Youku (Nasdaq: yoku), the Chinese version of Netflix, his latest episode with a touch of cryptocurrency got spread quickly. At press time, it has had viewership of over 4 million in two days over the weekend.