[Cryptography] A little history, was What is total world transaction volume?

Peter Gutmann pgut001 at cs.auckland.ac.nz
Wed Feb 8 22:39:42 EST 2017


John Levine <johnl at iecc.com> writes:

>Back in the 1800s, when only gold and silver were legal tender in the
>US, banks issued paper money that was redeemable in coin.  Some banks
>did this more enthusiastically than others, so depending on the
>reputation of the bank and how far you were from it (one could redeem
>the paper only at in person at the bank's office), the value of the
>paper varied.  

The same thing happened in Europe with thalers, some countries and states 
issued their version of the nominally equivalent currency in debased form.  
For example Austria with control of the Joachimsthal mines had high silver-
content coinage while the Dutch debased theirs, melting down foreign 
currency and re-minting it as lower-grade coins that were in theory of 
equivalent value but in practice weren't.  In the case of discovered coin 
hoards, the people stashing them had a pretty good idea of what was worth
hoarding, you'll find lots of coins from the high-silver-content states and 
very few if any from the low silver-content states even though they
technically had the same value.

Peter.


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