Quick Facts: The Evolution Of Money

As we might have learned from our history class one time, that people of the days traded surplus commodities with each other in a process commonly known as Barter Trading. The value of each good trade is debatable of course. And as a natural force of the marketplace, money evolved as a practical solution to the cumbersome process of exchanging goods at it’s physical face value. Over the period of time, money has taken many forms but whatever faces the money has taken – physical coin, notes, digital currency – money provides fixed value to goods that it represents.

Money’s Physical to Virtual Ascension

Money over time has taken a lot of forms and denominations and it has been increasingly complex. So complex, that now you need to hire wits of qualified accountants, financial advisors and chief finance officers to run personal financial investments up to the corporate financial transactions.

What began as a means of notating trade exchanges, then appeared in the form of coins and notes, is now primarily digital.

1. Barter (10,000 - 3,000 BCE)

Simply the exchange of goods of the same value for a specific item. A fattened Ox can be exchanged for a bushel of wheat, for example. A cup of salt to a pound of gold; during the time where salt is more expensive the gold. Barter trade has one known variation called “I Owe You” – IOU. Where an agreed goods is delivered in the future time. In the summertime where wheat is fully grown and harvested, it is delivered to the other party where it promised to deliver a fattened or well-raised cow in the winter and vice versa.

2. Trade Records (7,000 BCE)

As soon as writing has been invented the capability to record the value of certain goods can be documented setting a benchmark for every transaction. And eventually, artefacts such as beads, coloured cowrie shells or a pound of gold were given specific values which means that they already have the potential to be exchanged to goods of it’s assigned value.

“Item of Worth. Money that was used before, more in particular, gold coins has intrinsic value in them such as itself is a guaranteed value to traded goods. Not like today, where a money – notes, checks or coins only represents an assigned value by central banks.”

“Item of Worth – are money that was used before, more in particular, gold coins has intrinsic value in them such as itself is a guaranteed value to traded goods. Not like today, where money – notes, checks or coins only represents an assigned value by central banks.”

3. Coinage (6,000 BCE - 1100 CE)

Coinage before were made from precious metals that are used by traders and by now are usually issued by the state. The first traded coins to have been recorded was in Lydia in Asia Minor. It is a mixture of silver and gold minted into a disc and stamped with inscription. Same is true with the Athenian Drachma who minted pure silver and is traded all across the Greek economy.

4. Bank Notes (1100 - 2000 CE)

By this time, money became alienated from it’s direct relationship to precious metals. The what they called “Gold Standard” collapsed in the 1930s. As an outset, new ways of representing values for goods take a new shape – notes, paper bills, credit cards and digital currency.

5. Digital Currency (2000 CE and Onwards)

Utter sophistication brought about by digital technology skyrocketed the transformation of monetary representation. Money can now be traded in cyberspace with the digital currency called Cryptocurrency – one particularly famed crypto is Bitcoin. Cryptocurrency exists mainly on highly encrypted servers around the world. The very first inception of cryptocurrency such as Bitcoin was in 2008, and the very first known transaction happened in 2009.

Learn more about Cryptocurrency here ➤

Side Notes

The Law of Supply and Demand denotes how the availability of the product over the demand from buyers or consumers. There are three phases to it:

1. High supply, low demand. This is where prices tend to be lower by market force.

2. High demand, low supply. This is where prices tend to be higher by market force.

3. Equilibrium. This is where the supply meets the demand or the demand meets the influx of supplies. By market force, the price tends to settle at a certain level we call fair market value.

FIME

Author's Corner

Sweet, I blame you not, for mine the fault was, had I not been made of common clay. I had climbed the higher heights unclimbed yet, seen the fuller air, the larger day. From the wildness of my wasted passion I had struck a better, clearer song, Lit some lighter light of freer freedom, battled with some Hydra-headed wrong. – Oscar Wilde