EARTH

In the beginning there was only abundance. Etherything(sic) came from nature directly, and there was generally always enough.
The connection with nature was very strong and the sense of individual was most likely expanded to the well being of the tribe.

In terms of boundaries, the sense of I, me and mine was very primitive. The awareness of others property and possession only extended to the understanding of tribal well being.

No formal currency was necessary or even needed, we could consider this as the original gift economy.

WATER

As human kind started applying personal efforts to enhance the standard of their own living, a sense of ownership and property evolved. Equally, a desire to be recognised for work effort emerged. ´´I´´ and ´´mine´´ ego rose to the surface.

Early forms of currency stared off as items collected directly from nature, and through the fire of mind evolved from lightly processed items such as notching on sticks to coins pressed from rare metals

Exchange was based on the agreed value of the currency based on tangible value of the system backing it.

Discrepancies would arise when traders disagreed about the value of something, though this still occurred at a very localised level. The first level of alienation occurs with the trust of the physical currency itself, and being able to store it securely.

AIR

The era of air currency has a number of features that set it apart from the water system.

Firstly, central government systems emerged to regulate the value of money.
Secondly, the physical value or promise thereof literally vaporised, paving the way for fiat currencies globally.

Exchange is based on value of arbitrary value regulated by entities generally unknown and afar to the users, motives may not always be clear.
This system and upwards does however allow very insecure and/or greedy people to entitle themselves to wealth of others that they do not even know personally.

The idea of wealth of self and the ability to impede the wealth of others are core to this system. The second level of alienation extends to the trust of the monetary system regulation by controlling government system to be fair for all users.

FIRE

The final stage involves converting the monetary system to a purely etheric level, money itself is no longer physically tangible. As a faux currency, it only works while people believe in it or indeed are able to access it.

Value exchange involves heavy reliance on internetwork connected, hardware and software secured computing platforms with relatively short life cycles. With hardware constantly ´evolving´, older platforms regularly neglected security-wise, undue burden on mother nature exists to continually provide resources for the next short-lived life-cycle. This includes e-cash wallets, mobile phones, EPOS systems, internetwork infrastructure, banking systems, brokering systems.
Transient disruptions in either Electricity or network connectivity affecting trading for the duration of the disruption. Larger disruptions can have more devastating effects on the affected population.
Fire currency requires really well designed systems to prevent loss via corruption and nefarious hacking. Given that E-currency platforms created by corporations, for profit, inevitably suffer from yet to be discovered security issues. These are always present , especially where time sensitive race to push to the market exists.

The life-cycle of this monetary system is heavily dependant on the rapidly exhausting, short lived electronics systems that are obtained from nature in destructive way.
The third level of alienation extends to the trust surrounding the volatile platforms that deliver access to currency.

An interesting thing to note is that each step up in volatilisation of monetary system does not preclude the previous system from being used or from being functional. If a control system decides to no longer regulate a given system then it has only relinquished its own ability to control it, not from it existing. Direct exchange and bartering are still possible. And finally, gifting from the heart, from the centre of nature, cannot be interfered with.