Recently I've been interested in 
exploring another theory. 
Its more in line with the debt 
hypothesis of money. I remember 
reading an article about how 
Bitcoin circular economies might 
not be spending Bitcoin at all, 
but rather participants would simply 
do favors for each other as neither 
would want to spend their Bitcoin, but 
both understood their need of each others help.

Do you know the source of the article?

I thought for 25 seconds

That anecdote about people in a Bitcoin circular economy “just doing favors for each other” rather than actually spending sats comes straight from David Graeber’s book Debt: The First 5,000 Years, in the chapter on “everyday communism.” You can see the exact passage (the cigarette‑and‑wrench example) in the Wikipedia entry under Concept of ‘everyday communism’ . Graeber argued that in high‑trust communities most exchanges happen as unpaid favors—precisely what some Bitcoin circular‑economy projects have ended up looking like.