The Story of Money Think Piece 6

The human race has been using money for a long time. It was invented to
serve the purpose of valuing wealth and possessions. The first type of
currency which we have records of is the Lydian stater. Invented by
Lydia's king Alyttes in 600 before Christ, the Lydian stater was made from
a mixture of silver and gold that naturally occurs called electrum and it
showed the image that referred to its denomination or value.

The next great advice in currency was paper money. Invented by the
Chinese in the seventh century during the Tang dynasty, it was created to
replace the need of carrying large amounts of coins, which helped
immensely to the merchant development. Their value was sustained by
the gold deposits that their country from origin has stored.

In 1950, Frank McNamra, a forgetful man who always left his wallet
behind, created the first modern credit card with help of his business
partner Ralph Schneider. Members paid three dollars a year for the use of
this card with a seven percent interest rate every charge. His invention
caught on quickly and by 1955 Trip Charge, Golden Key, Gourmet Club
and a lot of other companies had their own credit cards.

In January third 2009, Satoshi Nakamoto, the pseudonym for an

anonymous computer programmer created the first cryptocurrency, which
then received the name of Bitcoin. It started with a price of $0.0099
dollars. Nowadays just one Bitcoin value is twenty eight thousand dollars.

As we see, the story of currency has traveled a long way. From metal
coins, to paper bills, passing through cards that may be used to pay, to
the next generation currency, the cryptocoins. The most common ones
are Bitcoin, Ethereum, Tether, BNB and USDC.