My take: a reasonably universal method of payment beats barter, because in a barter economy you can get stuck trying to exchange beans for oars, while the oar maker wants wood or carrots, and the wood cutter needs pumpkins or saw blades instead of peas. :)

Right. And that goes to the point of the video, which is that there was never a barter economy. For the obvious reason you point out: that it would be a pain in the ass for everyone involved. Back in the early days of humanity long distance trade probably consisted of small, high value objects - eg trading tin from Cornwall for glass beads from Egypt - for which there was an understood “exchange rate” to simplify barter, while the day-to-day economics of the community would be more of a gift economy, I give you what you need, you give me what I need, we shame free riders into behaving themselves, and everything works out.

IIRC David Graeber argued that the first money was actually credit - or money as a unit of account - as in “you give me a bushel of beans and now I owe you one set of oars, but you can transfer that debt to the woodcutter in exchange for wood and now I owe him one set of oars instead”. And so forth.

Which might also be in the video, but I didn’t have time to listen to it all the way through either 😆