Money has no life of its own except as money. To the man in the street, unaccustomed to thinking of money in abstract terms, this obvious truism may smack of casuistry. Yet nothing could be more simple and consistent than this reduction to tautology, since money in any period whatever of man’s history has, like life itself, never been found to represent the absence of money. Money is, and whatever form or shape it may assume it is never more nor less than money. To inquire therefore how it comes about that money has become what it now is is as idle as to inquire what makes evolution.
[…]
Money, then, whatever its real nature, reveals itself to us through form. Just as hydrogen and oxygen reveal their presence to us in varying forms and yet are not themselves, either separately or combined, such as water or peroxide, so money, whether in specie or counterfeit, is always something inclusive, coexistent, consubstantial and beyond the thing manifest. In a profound sense money may be said to resemble God Almighty.
https://www.themarginalian.org/2014/08/04/henry-miller-on-money/
The devil keeps books.
Regarding what 'money' might be, this quote says it all:
"With the invention of double-entry bookkeeping … the reality of money began to diminish until in our day it has almost disappeared entirely."
An accountant can wash a single dollar through any ledger using the above process to hide the value of its worth to show profit, loss, a net worth, or a net loss; the first two depend on what the shareholders want, the last two depend on what the lenders want.