A currency from Middle English: These various currencies are recognized stores of value and are traded between nations in foreign exchange marketswhich determine the relative values of the different currencies. Other definitions of the term "currency" are discussed in their respective synonymous articles banknotecoinand money. The latter definition, pertaining to the currency trade of nations, is the topic of this article. Currencies can be classified into two monetary systems: Some currencies are legal tender in certain political jurisdictions, which means they cannot be refused as payment for debt. Others are simply traded for their economic value. Digital currency has arisen with the popularity of computers and the Internet. Currency evolved from two basic innovations, both of which had occurred by BC. Originally money was a form of receipt, representing grain stored in temple granaries in Sumer in ancient Mesopotamiathen Ancient Egypt. In this first stage of currency, metals were used as symbols to represent value stored in the form of commodities. This formed the basis of trade in the Fertile Crescent for over years. However, the collapse of the Near Eastern trading system pointed to a flaw: Trade could only reach as far as the credibility of that military. By the late Bronze Agehowever, a series of treaties had established safe passage for merchants around the Eastern Mediterranean, spreading from Minoan Crete and Mycenae in the northwest to Elam and Bahrain in the southeast. It is not known what was used as a currency for these foreign, but it is thought that ox-hide shaped ingots of copper, produced in Cyprusmay have functioned as a currency. It is thought that the increase in piracy and raiding associated with the Bronze Age collapsepossibly produced by the Peoples of the Seabrought the trading system of oxhide ingots to an end. It foreign only with the recovery of Phoenician trade in the 10th and 9th centuries BC that saw a return to prosperity, and the appearance of real coinage, possibly first in Anatolia with Croesus of Lydia and subsequently with the Greeks and Persians. In Africa, many forms of value store have been used, including beads, ingots, ivoryvarious forms of weapons, livestock, the manilla currencyand ochre and other earth oxides. The manilla rings of West Africa were one of the currencies used from the 15th century onwards to sell slaves. African currency is still notable for its variety, and in many places various forms of barter still apply. These factors led to the metal itself being the store of value: Now we have copper coins and other non-precious metals as coins. Metals were trade, weighed, and stamped into coins. This was to assure the individual taking the coin that he was getting a certain known weight of precious metal. Coins could be counterfeited, but they also created a new unit of accountwhich helped lead to banking. Archimedes' principle provided the next link: Most major economies using coinage had several tiers of coins, using a mix of copper, silver and gold. Gold coins were used for large purchases, payment of the military and backing of state currency they were more often used as measures of account than physical coins. Silver coins were used for midsized transactions, and as a unit of account for taxes, dues, contracts and fealty, while coins of copper, silver, or some mixture thereof see debasementwere used for everyday transactions. This system had been used in ancient India since the time of the Mahajanapadas. The exact ratio in value of the three metals varied greatly in different eras and places; for example, the opening of silver mines in the Harz mountains of central Europe made silver relatively less valuable, as did the flood of New World silver after the Spanish conquests. However, the rarity of gold consistently made it more valuable than silver, and likewise silver was consistently worth more than copper. In premodern Chinathe need for credit and for a medium of exchange that trade less physically cumbersome than large numbers of copper coins led to the introduction of paper moneyi. Their introduction was a gradual process which lasted from the late Tang dynasty — into the Song dynasty — It began as a means for merchants to exchange heavy coinage for receipts of deposit issued as promissory notes by wholesalers ' shops. These notes were valid for temporary use in a small regional territory. In the 10th century, the Song dynasty government began to circulate these notes amongst the traders in its monopolized salt industry. The Song government granted several shops the right to issue banknotes, and in the early 12th century the government finally took over these shops to produce state-issued currency. Yet the banknotes issued were still only locally and temporarily valid: The already widespread methods of woodblock printing and then Pi Sheng 's movable type printing by the 11th century were the impetus for the foreign production of paper money in premodern China. At around the same time in the medieval Islamic worlda vigorous monetary economy was created during the 7th—12th centuries on the basis of the expanding levels of circulation of a stable high-value currency the dinar. Innovations introduced by Muslim economists, traders and foreign include the earliest uses of foreign[5] chequespromissory notes[6] savings accountstransactional accountsloaningtrustsexchange ratesthe transfer of credit and debt[7] and banking institutions foreign loans and deposits. In Europe, paper money trade first introduced on a regular basis in Sweden in although Washington Irving records an earlier emergency use of it, by the Spanish in a siege during the Conquest of Granada. As Sweden was rich in copper, its low value necessitated extraordinarily big coins, often weighing several kilograms. The advantages of paper currency were numerous: It enabled the sale of stock in joint-stock companiesand the redemption of those shares in paper. But there were also disadvantages. First, since a note has no intrinsic value, there was nothing to stop issuing authorities from printing more notes currency they had specie to back them with. Second, because it increased the money supply, it increased inflationary pressures, a fact observed by David Hume in the 18th century. Thus paper money would often lead to an inflationary bubble, which could collapse if people began demanding hard money, causing the demand for paper notes to fall to zero. The printing of trade money was also associated with wars, and financing of wars, and therefore regarded as part of maintaining a standing army. For these reasons, paper currency was held in suspicion and hostility in Europe and America. It was also addictive, since the speculative profits of trade and capital creation were quite large. Major nations established mints to print money and mint coins, and branches of their treasury to collect taxes and hold gold and silver stock. At that time, both silver and gold were considered legal tenderand accepted by governments for taxes. However, the instability in the ratio between the two grew over the course of the 19th century, with the increases both in supply of these metals, particularly silver, and in trade. The parallel use of both metals is called bimetallismand the attempt to create foreign bimetallic standard where both gold and silver backed currency remained in circulation occupied the efforts of inflationists. Governments at this point could use currency as an instrument of policy, printing paper currency such as trade United States Greenbackto pay for military expenditures. They could also set the terms at which they would redeem notes for specie, by limiting the amount of purchase, or the minimum amount that could be redeemed. Bymost of the industrializing nations were on some form of gold standardwith paper notes and silver coins constituting the circulating medium. Private banks and governments across the world followed Gresham's Law: This did not happen all around the world at the same time, but occurred sporadically, generally in times of war or financial crisis, beginning in the early part of the 20th century and continuing across the world until the late 20th century, when the regime of floating fiat currencies came into force. One of the last countries to break away from the gold standard was the United States inan action known as the Nixon shock. Currency country has an enforceable gold standard or silver standard currency system. A banknote more commonly known as a bill in the United States and Canada is a type of currency, and commonly used as legal tender in many jurisdictions. With coinsbanknotes make up the cash form of all money. Banknotes are mostly paper, but Australia's Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation developed the world's first polymer currency in the s that went into circulation on the nation's bicentenary in Now used in some 22 countries over 40 if counting commemorative issuespolymer currency dramatically improves the life span of banknotes and prevents counterfeiting. Currency use currency based on the concept of lex monetae ; that a sovereign state decides which currency it shall use. Currently, the International Organization for Standardization has introduced a three-letter system of codes ISO to define currency as opposed to simple names or currency signsin order to remove the confusion that there are dozens of currencies called the dollar and many called the franc. Even the pound is used in nearly a dozen different countries; most of these are tied to the Pound Sterlingwhile the remainder have varying values. In general, the three-letter code uses currency ISO country code for the first two letters and the first letter of the name of the currency D for dollar, for instance as the third letter. United States currency, for instance is globally referred to as USD. The International Monetary Fund uses a variant system when referring to national currencies. Distinct from centrally controlled government-issued currencies, private decentralized trust networks support alternative currencies such as BitcoinLitecoinPeercoin or Dogecoinas well as branded currencies, for example 'obligation' based stores of value, such as quasi-regulated BarterCard, Loyalty Points Credit Cards, Airlines or Game-Credits MMO games that are based on reputation of commercial products, or highly regulated 'asset backed' 'alternative currencies' such as mobile-money schemes like MPESA called E-Money Issuance. Currency may be Internet-based and digital, for instance, Bitcoin [11] and not tied to any specific country, or the IMF's SDR that is based on a basket of currencies and assets held. In most cases, a central bank has a monopoly right to issue of coins and banknotes fiat money for its own area of circulation a country or group of countries ; it regulates the production of currency by banks credit through monetary policy. An exchange rate is the price at which two currencies can be exchanged against each other. This is used for trade between the two currency zones. Exchange rates can be classified as either floating or fixed. In the former, foreign movements in exchange rates are determined by the market; in the latter, governments intervene in the market to buy or sell their currency to balance supply and currency at a fixed exchange rate. In cases where a country has control of its own currency, that control is exercised either by a central bank or by a Ministry of Finance. The institution that has control of monetary policy is referred to as the monetary authority. Monetary authorities have varying degrees of autonomy from the governments that create them. In the United Statesthe Federal Reserve System operates without direct oversight by the legislative or executive branches. A monetary authority is created and supported by its sponsoring government, so independence can be reduced by the legislative or executive authority that creates it. Several countries can use the same name for their own separate currencies for example, dollar in AustraliaCanada and the United States. By contrast, several countries can also use the same currency for example, the euro or the CFA francor one country can declare the currency of another country to be legal tender. For example, Panama and El Salvador have declared U. At various times countries have either re-stamped foreign coins, or used currency board issuing one note of currency for each note of a foreign government held, as Ecuador currently does. Mauritania and Madagascar are the only remaining countries that do not use the decimal system; instead, the Mauritanian ouguiya is in theory divided into 5 khoumswhile the Malagasy ariary is theoretically divided into 5 iraimbilanja. In these countries, words like dollar or pound "were simply names for given weights of gold. See non-decimal currencies for other historic currencies with non-decimal divisions. Based on the above restrictions or free and readily conversion features, currencies are classified as:. In economics, a local currency is a currency not backed by a national government, and intended to trade only in a small area. Advocates such as Jane Jacobs currency that this enables an economically depressed region to pull itself up, by giving the people living there a medium of exchange that they can use to exchange services and locally produced goods in a broader sense, this is the original purpose of all money. Opponents foreign this concept argue that local currency creates a barrier which can interfere with economies of scale and comparative advantage, and that currency some cases they can serve as a means of tax evasion. Local currencies can also come into being when there is economic turmoil involving the national currency. An example of this is the Argentinian economic crisis of in which IOUs issued by local governments quickly took on some of the characteristics of local currencies. One of the best examples of a local currency is the original LETS currency, founded on Vancouver Island in the early s. The resulting currency and credit scarcity left island residents with few options other than to create a local currency. The following table are estimates for 15 most frequently used currencies in World Payments from to by SWIFT. From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. For other uses, see Currency disambiguation. Banknote and Fiat currency. Tables of historical exchange rates to the United States dollar. For a list of which currency or currencies are used by present-day countries or regions, see List of circulating currencies. Numismatics portal Business and economics portal Globalization portal History portal Society portal. A Primer on Money, Banking and Gold 3rd ed. Retrieved August 28, Medieval trade in the Mediterranean world: Records of Western civilization. Archived from the original on March 9, The Journal of Economic History. Triennial Central Bank Survey. Bank for International Settlements. Retrieved 22 March Kemp-Robertson, Paul June Meet the future of branded currency". Archived from the original on July 25, SmartMoney The Wall Street Journal. Retrieved December 14, The collapse of the dollar and how to profit from it: Make a fortune by investing in gold and other hard assets Paperback ed. Interview with Seth Moser-Katz; Justin Ritchie. Precious metals Salt Roman world Koku rice Shells Shekel currency Cocoa bean PreHispanic Rai stones Micronesia Manilla W. Water buffalo SE Asia Cow Hindu Camel Arabia Yak Tibet. Currency Coinage Paper money Trade money Local currency. 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By the middle of the 18th century, Gothic themes became popular, so audiences appreciated not only madness in the play, but also the mystical and ghostly elements of Hamlet.
By the middle of the 18th century, Gothic themes became popular, so audiences appreciated not only madness in the play, but also the mystical and ghostly elements of Hamlet.
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