Key Takeaways Silver certificates are a historic form of currency in the United States, issued between 1878 and 1965. Originally able to be exchanged for silver bullion, they are still legal tender, but can no longer be converted into the precious metal. Today, silver certificates are likely to have a collectible value that far exceeds […]
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Bimetallism is a monetary system where both gold and silver are money, and the critical thing is the ratio between the two. Before we had the fiat standard, we had the gold standard. And before we had the gold standard, we had bimetallism. It is an ancient monetary system that continued until relatively recently. It
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No one can definitively say exactly how much gold was confiscated in 1933 as no record was ever kept. However, SD Bullion has run the numbers and estimates that 2,665 tonnes was confiscated. They arrived at this figure by looking at how much gold was melted down by the government between 1933 and 1939. When
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The yellow metal’s early history wasn’t in gold coins but in big lumps of uncoined metal. Various forms of commodity money had been used up to that point but gold emerged as the superior option. However in its uncoined form, trade using gold as money was inefficient as merchants had to assess the weight and
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World history has certainly served up some beautiful gold coins. Gold became money because it was scare, malleable, durable, portable, divisible and fungible. Beauty wasn’t one of the requirements, but nevertheless it certainly helps gold’s timeless appeal. I must admit, my bias is towards the modern coins. I love the ancient coins for their history
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The longest lasting fiat currency in history is the Great British Pound. The pound dates back to 928, making it the oldest currency still in use, although it has only been a fully fledged fiat currency since 1971. Initially defined as a weight of silver, the pound became a fiat currency briefly in 1745 due
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Today gold is the dominant monetary metal with silver often thought of as the junior partner. However it hasn’t always been that way throughout history. Silver has a long history of use as money and it could be argued that it has been even more influential than gold. Many famous silver coins, such as the
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The history of fiat currency is a history of failed experiments. Authorities have sought to utilise the flexibility it gives their finances, but have often mismanaged it and brought catastrophe. While fiat currency is the norm today, it has been less common in the past. Throughout much of human history, society has used some form
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The development of Monero was a significant evolution in the world of cryptocurrency. However, unlike unlike Bitcoin, the history of Monero is not very well known. Monero (XMR) is a private by default Proof of Work cryptocurrency that was created in April 2014 as a fork of Bytecoin, using the CryptoNote protocol. The key value
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For most of human history societies have used some form of hard money. The definition of hard money is a form of money were it is difficult to produce new units and therefore it is difficult to increase the supply. This is also known as sound money. Easy money, by contrast, is money that is
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