Dolla Dolla Bills Y’all: The History and Evolution of Cash
Summary: We’re Listen Money Matters, but we’ve never discussed money. Get ready to holla. Dolla dolla bills y’all: The history and evolution of cash.<br> Societies haven’t always used cash to transact business. The evolution of cash is pretty fascinating.<br> The Evolution of Cash<br> Money is around 3,000 years old. Before that, societies bartered. I make candles. You make shoes. I need shoes, and you need candles. I give you some candles, and you give me some shoes. This isn’t a great system though.<br> How many candles are the shoes worth? What if I need shoes, but you don’t need candles? There needed to be a better system.<br> Coins and Paper Currency<br> The first coins were minted by King Alyatttes of Lydia (modern Western Turkey) in 600 BCE and minted with a naturally occurring mixture of silver and gold. Paper bills first appear in China during the Tang Dynasty (618-907 A.D.).<br> Paper currency was first used in what became the U.S. in 1690 and was known as Colonial Notes. The Continental Congress issued paper notes called Continental Currency during the Revolutionary War to fund the militia.<br> U.S. Money<br> The United States and the dollar are inextricably linked, and the dollar has been around almost as long as the country.<br> <br> The First Dollar<br> <a href="https://www.listenmoneymatters.com/inflation-vs-deflation/">Inflation</a> had caused the Continental Currency to become worthless, so a new form of currency was needed. Congress created the U.S. dollar in 1792 and designated it our standard unit of money. The term dollar wasn’t coined (ha!) by the U.S. though. Spain had a coin called the dollar.<br> For decades, it was state-chartered banks and not the federal government that issued paper money. This meant that there were thousands of different kinds of currency floating around the country. This was untenable; we needed a single, national currency.<br> The National Banking System<br> To address this problem, we created the National Banking System in 1863. It eliminated all those different varieties of paper money that was in circulation and created a system of banks that were charted by the federal government rather than by state governments.<br> The Guys in Suits<br> Counterfeiting was a significant problem and combatting it was the original purpose of the Secret Service. After President McKinley’s assassination in 1901, its duties expanded to include protecting future presidents.<br> The Secret Service does both today. The agency protects the U.S. financial system from crimes including counterfeiting, bank, mail, wire, and credit card fraud.<br> No Reverse Image Search<br> In 1889, legislation passed that required that currency and other securities with portraits also had to include the name of the person portrayed.<br> Only portraits of deceased persons “whose place in history the American people know well” are allowed to be used on government-issued securities.<br> Which is good because none of us want Trump dollars in our wallets. Were there no law already in place preventing such, I’m sure they’d be a thing.<br> Separation of Church and State!<br> We have (for now) separation of church and state enshrined in the First Amendment so why is “In God We Trust” printed on our money?<br> It wasn’t always there.<br> It was put in place in 1955 as a way to distinguish gawd fearing ‘Mericans from the godless commies of the USSR.<br> This is why “One nation, under God” was added to the Pledge of Allegiance too. The phrase was not initially in the pledge; it wasn’t in use before 1954.<br> <br> No More Baller Bills<br> In 1946, the U.S. stopped printing bills in denominations of $1,000 or more, but they continued to circulate until 1969 when the Federal Reserve recalled them.<br> President Nixon thought to have such large denominations circula...
