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Double-die style struck coin from Ancient India, c 304-232 BCE featuring an elephant on one face and a lion on the other. Since that time, coins have been the most universal embodiment of money. These first coins were made of electrum, a naturally occurring pale yellow mixture of gold and silver that was further alloyed with silver and copper.
The history of money is the development over time of systems for the exchange, storage, and measurement of wealth. Money is a means of fulfilling these functions indirectly and in general rather than directly, as with barter. Money may take a physical form as in coins and notes, or may exist as a written or electronic account.
Coins were used and may have been invented by the early Anatolian traders who stamped their marks to avoid weighing each time used. Herodotus states that the first coinage was issued by Croesus , King of Lydia , spreading to the golden Daric (worth 20 sigloi or shekel), [ 4 ] issued by the Achaemenid Empire and the silver Athenian obol and ...
The Coinage Act of 1792 established the United States Mint and regulated the coinage of the United States. [3] The act created coins in the denominations of Half Cent (1/200 of a dollar), Cent (1/100 of a dollar, or a cent), Half Dime (also known as a half disme) (five cents), Dime (also known as a disme) (10 cents), Quarter (25 cents), Half Dollar (50 cents), Dollar, Quarter Eagle ($2.50 ...
This had the effect of placing the nation effectively (although not officially) on the gold standard. The retained weight in the dollar coin was a nod to bimetallism, although it had the effect of further driving the silver dollar coin from commerce. Foreign coins, including the Spanish dollar, were also widely used [9] as legal tender, until 1857.
The three most important standards of the ancient Greek monetary system were the Attic standard, based on the Athenian drachma of 4.3 grams (2.8 pennyweights) of silver, the Corinthian standard based on the stater of 8.6 g (5.5 dwt) of silver, that was subdivided into three silver drachmas of 2.9 g (1.9 dwt), and the Aeginetan stater or didrachm of 12.2 g (7.8 dwt), based on a drachma of 6.1 g ...
Legal tender, or narrow money (M0) is the cash created by a Central Bank by minting coins and printing banknotes. Bank money, or broad money (M1/M2) is the money created by private banks through the recording of loans as deposits of borrowing clients, with partial support indicated by the cash ratio. Currently, bank money is created as ...
The large number of coins required to raise an army and pay for supplies often necessitated the debasement of the coinage. An example of this is the denarii that were struck by Mark Antony to pay his army during his battles against Octavian. These coins, slightly smaller in diameter than a normal denarius, were made of noticeably debased silver ...