History and the Future of Currencies

Our history book provides us with very little knowledge about how our economy came to be. This post aims to give an overview of how the currencies that we know of today, have evolved and go in detail on digital currencies the present talk of the town and what will become of these currencies. 

After a long period of time, historians, say that societies discovered that they found it safer and easier to exchange goods with goods- the barter system, instead of going into war with each other, frequently traded, between individuals or societies, for other goods were domestic animals like cattle and goats. With the development of farming in the 8^th millennium grains were added to the list of exchangeable goods.

It is, only after the trade around the extraction of rich metals that the commodity currencies came to be used, the kingdom of Lidia on the western cost of Turkey is said to have crafted coins that were a mixture of gold and silver- “Electrum”. They were standard in weight; ranging from 0.15 grams to about 14 grams, in irregular shapes and sizes. Aside from Lydia, Greece and a few kingdoms and individuals from China that used coins for trade. The innovation of paper currencies, scholars say, can be credited to the Chinese, as they found it to be lighter auxiliary for coins. The momentum of paper currencies took its time to reach Europe. By 1661 banking institutions had been formed and the government of Sweden issued its own state sponsored banknotes. Further to which the Bank of England was formed. From then on various different world currencies came to use and various laws and policies were created to keep counterfeit and various frauds from taking place.

Subsequently, Paper currencies were normalised and newer technologies have come into play to make transactions easier, digital currencies and E-wallets like PayPal and others are some innovations that are playing a major part in reducing paper currencies in the 2010s.

The initial idea for digital cash, even though a failure, in a way paved the path for the cryptocurrencies to come into existence, people have taken a keen interest in its growth and market, with multiple use cases for them, making it the best time to invest and use cryptocurrency, through your digital cryptocurrency wallet. The blockchain technology that cryptocurrencies are formed in make transaction and trading much safer than that conducted through a bank.

If we went with the idea that “History repeats” we could assume that cryptocurrencies are just the beginning in what will be an economic revolution, where we could expect digital currencies that are far more stable will take the crown from bitcoin. As far as blockchain is considered we could see that the currencies of the future will mostly be utility based where there is no centre that regulates the supply of currency and its value, eliminating the possibility of an economic calamity. All this, however, is possible only with the mainstream usage of the present unit of the beginning stage of the evolution, that is cryptocurrency, this can be achieved only by educating the masses on the benefits of the blockchain system and cryptocurrencies.