Introduction: The History of Money
Synthchain WP (1)
PART I: DISCOUNTING CURRENCY VALUES
Money as we know it today has been a feature of our world since around 800 BC — 600 BC, when the first coins were minted in Turkey between the reigns of King Alyates II and Queen Hermodike II. Coins were first minted with the exact amount of metal stipulated and only later during Roman times did coins become regularly debased and did seigniorage become a feature of the manufacture of cash instruments. Separately, the Chinese Emperor Qin Shi Huang introduced a copper coin in about 200 BC which was made with a hole through the middle of it, affording it additional mobile utility by way of being able to be carried on the back of horses via a single string that ran through the coins’ center as opposed to in much heavier ceramic pots. While the Chinese were some centuries late to adopt the concept of coinage versus western societies, their invention of the paper note in the 7tt– 11thcentury predates the earliest form of paper money in Europe by around half a millennium. Around 1700, banks in England began independently printing banknotes which could, once brought into the bank, be exchanged on the spot for a pre-agreed amount of silver. Thus, in their original form, bank notes were nothing less than securities according to the contemporary definition — that is to say, promises to pay the bearer a fixed agreed amount of money on a certain date in the future. Notes were designed with the intent of being able to represent larger sums of underlying base metal and to be more convenient to draw on. Later they became effective fundraising instruments for British banks, since customers would seldom exchange their notes for metal and thus a greater amount of value could be issued than was held in vaults by the banks.
