Speaking of alternate mediums of exchange in rural America:

When I first got my motorcycle and started taking trips out into the rural interior, I was surprised to find how much of the durable goods economy took the form of person-to-person transactions in which deals of a value more than, say, $500, were conducted not in cash but in barter, with old trucks and motorsports “toys” - ATVs, dirt bikes - functioning as large bills, guns and power tools as smaller bills, and ammunition as change.