This is David Graeber's theory, it's not a bald statement of fact like "the US went off the gold standard in 1971". Graeber even admits this:

  So really, rather than the standard story – first there’s 
  barter, then money, then finally credit comes out of that 
  – if anything its precisely the other way around.

So he knows he's pushing something counterintuitive here. Where's the evidence he's marshalled? He also identifies the "standard story" with "free market economists" and tacitly identifies himself as a chartalist. Now, I don't want to throw the baby out with the bathwater - there is something interesting about the idea of a general sense of indebtedness as important to the origins of economics - but it does seem like we've parachuted in two different modes of behavior from central casting. On the one hand, the chartalists/Graeber types who are in favor of consumption, debt, inflation, and the state. On the other the Austrians/Nakamoto types who are in favor of production, savings, deflation, and the individual.

I really just want the people in favor of infinite debt and bailouts to hold their own currency and transact amongst themselves, while we do the converse. I don't want to be part of a group of people who think of debt as more fundamental than production, and/or who favor (and historically stress) vaguer gift/debt economies over more quantifiable barter/money economies.