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Money, in some form, has been part of human history for at least the last 3,000 years. Before that time, it is assumed that a system of bartering was likely used.
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Egyptian were making metal rings which some historians thinks they used as monney
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In China, rather than exchanging objects like tools and weapons
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Just when it looked like Lydia was taking the lead in currency developments, the Chinese moved from coins to paper money.
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Lydia's King Alyattes minted the first official currency. The coins were made from electrum, a mixture of silver and gold that occurs naturally, and stamped with pictures that acted as denominations.
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Europeans were using more and more metal coins, made with metal taken from their colonies averseas
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Canadian colinies began to use paper money too and this innovation led to a huge increase in international trade.
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A Spanish eight real coins was often Split up into bits pay for things, leaving the bits as a change
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The shift to paper money in Europe increased the amount of international trade that could occur. Banks and the ruling classes started buying currencies from other nations and created the first currency market.
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The 21st century gave rise to two disruptive forms of currency: Mobile payments and virtual currency. A mobile payment is money rendered for a product or service through a portable electronic device such as a cell phone, smartphone or PDA.
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Bitcoin, invented in 2009 by the pseudonymous Satoshi Nakamoto, became the gold standard--so to speak--for virtual currencies
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Despite many advances, money still has a very real and permanent effect on how we do business today. (Follow the development of money in the United States in The History Of Money: Currency Wars.)
