EVOLUTION OF MONEY
Money is anything that is commonly accepted by a group of people for the exchange of goods, services, or resources. Every country has its own system of coins and paper money.
Money is any object or record that is generally accepted as payment for goods and services and repayment of debts in a given socio-economic context or country Mishkin, Frederic S. (2007). The Economics of Money, Banking, and Financial Markets (Alternate Edition). Boston: Addison Wesley. p. 8. ISBN 0-321-42177-9.
The main functions of money are distinguished as: a medium of exchange; a unit of account; a store of value; and, occasionally in the past, astandard of deferred payment. Mankiw, N. Gregory (2007). "2". Macroeconomics (6th ed.). New York: Worth Publishers. pp. 22–32. ISBN 0-7167-6213-7.
Money is any object or record that is generally accepted as payment for goods and services and repayment of debts in a given socio-economic context or country Mishkin, Frederic S. (2007). The Economics of Money, Banking, and Financial Markets (Alternate Edition). Boston: Addison Wesley. p. 8. ISBN 0-321-42177-9.
The main functions of money are distinguished as: a medium of exchange; a unit of account; a store of value; and, occasionally in the past, astandard of deferred payment. Mankiw, N. Gregory (2007). "2". Macroeconomics (6th ed.). New York: Worth Publishers. pp. 22–32. ISBN 0-7167-6213-7.
Bartering and Commodity Money
In the beginning, people bartered. Barter is the exchange of a good or service for another good or service, a bag of rice for a bag of beans. However, what if you couldn't agree what something was worth in exchange or you didn't want what the other person had. To solve that problem humans developed what is called commodity money.
A commodity is a basic item used by almost everyone. In the past, salt, tea, tobacco, cattle and seeds were commodities and therefore were once used as money. However, using commodities as money had other problems. Carrying bags of salt and other commodities was hard, and commodities were difficult to store or were perishable.
Coins and Paper Money
Metals objects were introduced as money around 5000 B.C. By 700 BC, the Lydians became the first in the Western world to make coins. Countries were soon minting their own series of coins with specific values. Metal was used because it was readily available, easy to work with and could be recycled. Since coins were given a certain value, it became easier to compare the cost of items people wanted.
Some of the earliest known paper money dates back to China, where the issue of paper money became common from about AD 960 on wards.
Representative Money
With the introduction of paper currency and non-precious coinage, commodity money evolved into representative money. This meant that what money itself was made of no longer had to be very valuable.
Representative money was backed by a government or bank's promise to exchange it for a certain amount of silver or gold. For example, the old British Pound bill or Pound Sterling was once guaranteed to be redeemable for a pound of sterling silver.
For most of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the majority of currencies were based on representative money through the use of the gold standard.
Fiat Money
Representative money has now been replaced by fiat money. Fiat is the Latin word for "let it be done". Money is now given value by a government fiat or decree, in other words enforceable legal tender laws were made. By law the refusal of "legal tender" money in favor of some other form of payment is illegal.
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