Types
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Commodity[edit]
Main article: Commodity money
A 1914 British gold sovereign
Many items have been used as commodity money such as naturally scarce precious metals, conch shells, barley, beads, etc., as well as many other things that are thought of as having value. Commodity money value comes from the commodity out of which it is made. The commodity itself constitutes the money, and the money is the commodity. Examples of commodities that have been used as mediums of exchange include gold, silver, copper, rice, Wampum, salt, peppercorns, large stones, decorated belts, shells, alcohol, cigarettes, cannabis, candy, etc. These items were sometimes used in a metric of perceived value in conjunction with one another, in various commodity valuation or price system economies. The use of commodity money is similar to barter, but a commodity money provides a simple and automatic unit of account for the commodity which is being used as money. Although some gold coins such as the Krugerrand are considered legal tender, there is no record of their face value on either side of the coin. The rationale for this is that emphasis is laid on their direct link to the prevailing value of their fine gold content. American Eagles are imprinted with their gold content and legal tender face value.
Representative[edit]
Main article: Representative money
In 1875, the British economist William Stanley Jevons described the money used at the time as "representative money". Representative money is money that consists of token coins, paper money or other physical tokens such as certificates, that can be reliably exchanged for a fixed quantity of a commodity such as gold or silver. The value of representative money stands in direct and fixed relation to the commodity that backs it, while not itself being composed of that commodity.
Fiat[edit]
Main article: Fiat money
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). Usually, the government declares the fiat currency (typically notes and coins from a central bank, such as the Federal Reserve System in the U.S.) to be legal tender, making it unlawful not to accept the fiat currency as a means of repayment for all debts, public and private.
Some bullion coins such as the Australian Gold Nugget and American Eagle are legal tender, however, they trade based on the market price of the metal content as a commodity, rather than their legal tender face value (which is usually only a small fraction of their bullion value).
Fiat money, if physically represented in the form of currency (paper or coins), can be accidentally damaged or destroyed. However, fiat money has an advantage over representative or commodity money, in that the same laws that created the money can also define rules for its replacement in case of damage or destruction. For example, the U.S. government will replace mutilated Federal Reserve Notes (U.S. fiat money) if at least half of the physical note can be reconstructed, or if it can be otherwise proven to have been destroyed. By contrast, commodity money that has been lost or destroyed cannot be recovered.
Demurrage[edit]
This section is an excerpt from Demurrage currency.[edit]
Demurrage currency, also known as depreciating money: 7  or stamp scrip in its paper money form, is a type of money that is designed to gradually lose purchasing power at a constant rate. Demurrage money is often confused with inflation, as they both cause money to lose value, but they have significantly different economic effects.: 15–16  Unlike normal money, demurrage is designed to be only a temporary store of value. Demurrage money functions primarily as a medium of exchange and a unit of account.: 16  Proponents of demurrage currency generally believe that the medium of exchange and store of value functions of traditional money are antagonistic against each other.
The German-Argentine economist Silvio Gesell advocated for demurrage currency as part of the Freiwirtschaft economic system. He referred to demurrage as Freigeld ("free money")—"free" because it would be freed from hoarding and interest. Gesell theorized that Freigeld would increase the velocity of money, eliminate inflation, reduce unemployment, create an interest-free economy, and lead to fewer recessions.: 2  John Maynard Keynes wrote "the idea behind stamped money is sound", but he also criticized it.
Demurrage money was used in ancient Egypt and in Europe during the High Middle Ages. It has been credited for the economic prosperity of those times.: 5–6  Shortly after Gesell's death, demurrage currencies peaked in popularity during the Great Depression as a series of emergency currencies, intended to reinvigorate the circular flow of income throughout the economy, due to their faster circulation velocities.: 16–17 : 8  Despite their success, most demurrage currencies were banned by central banks for violating national monopolies on currency.: 8  As of 2026, there are only a handful of local demurrage currencies that are still used, with the Chiemgauer being the most notable and widely used of them all.
Coinage[edit]
Main article: Coin
Ancient Jewish coin, engraved menorah, from the Hasmoneon kingdom 37-40 BCE
These factors led to the shift of the store of value being the metal itself: at first silver, then both silver and gold, and at one point there was bronze as well. Now we have copper coins and other non-precious metals as coins. Metals were mined, 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 account, which helped lead to banking. Archimedes' principle provided the next link: coins could now be easily tested for their fine weight of the metal, and thus the value of a coin could be determined, even if it had been shaved, debased or otherwise tampered with (see Numismatics).
In most major economies using coinage, copper, silver, and gold formed three tiers of coins. Gold coins were used for large purchases, payment of the military, and backing of state activities. Silver coins were used for midsized transactions, and as a unit of account for taxes, dues, contracts, and fealty, while copper coins represented the coinage of common transaction. This system had been used in ancient India since the time of the Mahajanapadas. In Europe, this system worked through the medieval period because there was virtually no new gold, silver, or copper introduced through mining or conquest.[citation needed] Thus the overall ratios of the three coinages remained roughly equivalent.
Paper[edit]
Main article: Banknote
Huizi currency, issued in 1160
In premodern China, the need for credit and for circulating a medium that was less of a burden than exchanging thousands of copper coins led to the introduction of paper money. This economic phenomenon was a slow and gradual process that took place from the late Tang dynasty (618–907) into the Song dynasty (960–1279). It began as a means for merchants to exchange heavy coinage for receipts of deposit issued as promissory notes from shops of wholesalers, notes that were valid for temporary use in a small regional territory. In the 10th century, the Song dynasty government began circulating these notes amongst the traders in their monopolized salt industry. The Song government granted several shops the sole 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 regionally valid and temporary; it was not until the mid 13th century that a standard and uniform government issue of paper money was made into an acceptable nationwide currency. The already widespread methods of woodblock printing and then Pi Sheng's movable type printing by the 11th century was the impetus for the massive production of paper money in premodern China.
Paper money from different countries
At around the same time in the medieval Islamic world, a 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 economists, traders and merchants of the Muslim world include the earliest uses of credit, cheques, savings accounts, transactional accounts, loaning, trusts, exchange rates, the transfer of credit and debt, and banking institutions for loans and deposits.[need quotation to verify]
In Europe, paper money was first introduced in Sweden in 1661. Sweden was rich in copper, thus, because of copper's low value, extraordinarily big coins (often weighing several kilograms) had to be made. The advantages of paper currency were numerous: it reduced transport of gold and silver, and thus lowered the risks; it made loaning gold or silver at interest easier since the specie (gold or silver) never left the possession of the lender until someone else redeemed the note; and it allowed for a division of currency into credit and specie backed forms. It enabled the sale of stock in joint stock companies, and the redemption of those shares in the paper.
However, these advantages are held within their disadvantages. First, since a note has no intrinsic value, there was nothing to stop issuing authorities from printing more of it than they had specie to back it with. Second, because it increased the money supply, it increased inflationary pressures, a fact observed by David Hume in the 18th century. The result is that 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 paper 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 this time both silver and gold were considered legal tender, and accepted by governments for taxes. However, the instability in the ratio between the two grew over the 19th century, with the increase both in the supply of these metals, particularly silver, and of trade. This is called bimetallism and the attempt to create a 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 the United States greenback, to 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.
Banknotes of different currencies with a face value of 5000
By 1900, most of the industrializing nations were on some form of a gold standard, with paper notes and silver coins constituting the circulating medium. Private banks and governments across the world followed Gresham's law: keeping gold and silver paid but paying out in notes. 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 in 1971.
No country anywhere in the world today has an enforceable gold standard or silver standard currency system.
Commercial bank[edit]
Main article: Demand deposit
A check, used as a means of converting funds in a demand deposit to cash
Commercial bank money or demand deposits are claims against financial institutions that can be used for the purchase of goods and services. A demand deposit account is an account from which funds can be withdrawn at any time by check or cash withdrawal without giving the bank or financial institution any prior notice. Banks have the legal obligation to return funds held in demand deposits immediately upon demand (or 'at call'). Demand deposit withdrawals can be performed in person, via checks or bank drafts, using automatic teller machines (ATMs), or through online banking.
Commercial bank money is created by commercial banks whose reserves (held as cash and other highly liquid assets) typically constitute only a fraction of their deposits, while the banks maintain an obligation to redeem all these deposits upon demand - a practise known as fractional-reserve banking. Commercial bank money differs from commodity and fiat money in two ways: firstly it is non-physical, as its existence is only reflected in the account ledgers of banks and other financial institutions, and secondly, there is some element of risk that the claim will not be fulfilled if the financial institution becomes insolvent.
The money multiplier theory presents the process of creating commercial bank money as a multiple (greater than 1) of the amount of base money created by the country's central bank, the multiple itself being a function of the legal regulation of banks imposed by financial regulators (e.g., potential reserve requirements) beside the business policies of commercial banks and the preferences of households - factors which the central bank can influence, but not control completely. Contemporary central banks generally do not control the creation of money, nor do they try to, though their interest rate-setting monetary policies naturally affect the amount of loans and deposits that commercial banks create.
Digital or electronic[edit]
Main articles: Digital money and Bitcoin
Café in Delft accepting Bitcoin
The development of computer technology in the second part of the twentieth century allowed money to be represented digitally. By 1990, in the United States all money transferred between its central bank and commercial banks was in electronic form. By the 2000s most money existed as digital currency in bank databases. In 2012, by number of transaction, 20 to 58 percent of transactions were electronic (dependent on country).
Anonymous digital currencies were developed in the early 2000s. Early examples include Ecash, bit gold, RPOW, and b-money. In 2008, Bitcoin introduced the concept of a decentralised, borderless currency that requires no trusted third party. Instead, it relies on a distributed network of nodes running open-source software to enforce the system’s rules and reach consensus, allowing it to operate without permission from banks or governments.
