What is the origin of money as a tool to facilitate commerce, and were there sinister influences involved?

This is a big subject indeed because it is not only a representative of energy and, therefore, a power of its own, it is also a vector for evil and the way in which it is controlled and regulated is also quite revealing about the current power structure and who it truly serves. The idea of money is extraterrestrial in origin, it is how they conduct their own affairs, having a form of money as a type of energy exchange they can use among themselves to transfer power and authority and also with other civilizations under their control who must follow along and use the same means of exchange. There is obvious convenience in having something simple and efficient to handle as a medium of exchange, rather than actual commodities or various goods, let alone the services often needing to be compensated for, that have no ready counterpart as a medium of exchange and would require a barter system for paying something equivalent in desirability. Such systems, as used in bartering, are quite cumbersome and not suited for a modern setting where there are large concentrations of people who are highly specialized in their activities and function, and whose work is very abstract, being one link in a long chain of events that must be coordinated to bring about creation of a new product of value, or a service of some kind, with many component parts and players. To keep all this running would be too complicated to arrange through a barter system so, therefore, a surrogate, a medium of exchange universally accepted is a powerful idea that makes such endeavors possible and will allow them to run smoothly. There is nothing inherently evil in this arrangement. The key is whether the surrogate for goods and services has enough inherent value in its own right that its quantity is in keeping with the nature of the value it represents rather than something that is artificial and can be created in high volume at little or no cost, but is only represented as having value and then there is great danger of a manipulation and a loss for those over‑interpreting and overappreciating its true worth. This is the great defect in fiat currencies printed arbitrarily, and as needed, by powerful governments who, in the doing, cheapen its value and risk ruin for those accepting the money and believing its value, and giving away their livelihood in exchange for a promise that might not be paid in the end. This illustrates the flaw in the idea and in the system itself, that using something to represent work rests solely on a mutual agreement. When those controlling things are working against the human underlings, you cannot trust their system of government nor finance to be fair and equitable, but to have many hidden inefficiencies and risks of financial manipulation, and even collapse, that could be of great benefit to the interlopers. So the fluidity of money as a medium of exchange is overshadowed by the risks it represents in having no intrinsic value of its own unless backed by something tangible. This is a hard-won lesson that is learned over and over through history and will be learned yet again in the current generation.