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The value of Legal Tender Greenbacks swung wildly but trading was from 85 to 33 cents on the gold dollar. [citation needed] This resulted in a situation in which the greenback "Legal Tender" notes of 1862 were fiat, and so gold and silver were held, and paper circulated at a discount because of Gresham's law. The 1861 Demand Notes were a huge ...
On 1862-02-25, Congress passed the First Legal Tender Act, turning United States Notes into legal tender, with two exceptions: They could not be used to pay customs duties, or interest on the public debt. These could be paid only with gold and Demand Notes. Importers, therefore, continued to use Demand Notes in place of gold.
The alternative to a commodity money system is fiat money which is defined by a central bank and government law as legal tender even if it has no intrinsic value. Originally fiat money was paper currency or base metal coinage, but in modern economies it mainly exists as data such as bank balances and records of credit or debit card purchases, [3] and the fraction that exists as notes and coins ...
The Legal Tender Cases were two 1871 United States Supreme Court cases that affirmed the constitutionality of paper money. The two cases were Knox v. Lee and Parker v. Davis. The U.S. federal government had issued paper money known as United States Notes during the American Civil War, pursuant to the terms of the Legal Tender Act of 1862.
By the First Legal Tender Act, Congress limited the Treasury's emission of United States Notes to $150,000,000; however, by 1863, the Second Legal Tender Act, [9] enacted July 11, 1862, a Joint Resolution of Congress, [10] and the Third Legal Tender Act, [11] enacted March 3, 1863, had expanded the limit to $450,000,000, the option to exchange ...
Gold coins are an example of legal tender that are traded for their intrinsic value, rather than their face value. Fiat money or fiat currency is money whose value is not derived from any intrinsic value or guarantee that it can be converted into a valuable commodity (such as gold). Instead, it has value only by government order (fiat).
It is often contrasted with fiat currency issued by governments or central banks. In many countries, the issuance of private paper currencies and/or the minting of metal coins intended to be used as currency may even be a criminal act such as in the United States (18 U.S. Code § 486). [ 1 ]
Apart from cash, legal tender issued on the fiat of a sovereign government, [12] [13] examples of assets used as potential stores of value are: Financial assets, e.g. stocks, bonds and other fixed income investments, investment funds, private equity; Real estate, e.g. home-ownership, rental property, or through financial securities or ...