“Stone Money” on This Pacific Island is History’s First Public Ledger

4 min read

Yap, Micronesia, also known as the Island of Stone Money, is a 40 square-mile island just 500 miles southwest of Guam in the Southern Pacific Ocean. It rests 9.5 degrees north of the equator which makes the year-long summers unbearably hot (for outsiders). Typical rain patterns have been altered over the last few years due to evolving effects of climate change and el Niño/la Niña weather patterns. Mostly kept hidden away from the few tourists that do come are beautiful stone paths that serve as intra-village walk ways. These stone paths extend deep into the taro patches and tropical jungles…....

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John DeCleene Whilst having spent a lot of his life in Asia, John DeCleene has lived and studied all over the world - including spells in Hong Kong, Mexico, The U.S. and China. He graduated with a BA in Political Science from Tulane University in 2016. Fluent in English and proficient in Mandarin and Spanish, he can communicate and connect with most of the world’s population too, and this certainly helped John as he gained work experience interning for the U.S.-Taiwan Business counsel in Washington D.C. as an investment analyst and then working alongside U.S. Senator Robert P. Casey of Pennsylvania as a legislative intern. He subsequently worked as a business analyst for a mutual fund in Singapore, where his passion for travel and aptitude for creating connections between opportunities and ideas was the perfect intersection of natural ability and experience, spending his time travelling between Cambodia, Hong Kong, and China investigating and discovering untapped investment opportunities. John is a fund manager for OCIM’s fintech fund, and currently progressing towards becoming a CFA charter holder. He loves to travel for business and pleasure, having visited 38 countries (including North Korea); he represents the new breed of global citizen for the 21st century.