Money is used to pay for various goods and services.

It is also used to measure and store value.

Money usually takes the form of coins, banknotes and bank balances.
There are a number of different currencies used in countries around the world.
Many countries have their own currency, while some use a shared currency.
An example of a shared currency is the euro used in the European Union by countries such
as France, Germany and Spain.
The currency most traded around the world is the United States dollar.
Other heavily traded currencies include the euro, Japanese yen and pound sterling (British
pound).
It is believed that products such as livestock and grain were used to barter (exchange goods
and services without the use of money) over 10000 years ago.
The first coins were minted (made) around 2500 years ago.
Paper money was first used in China over 1000 years ago.
The benefit of metal coins is that they are portable and durable.
The original value of a British pound was equal to a pound (in weight) of silver.
Credit cards were first used in the United States in the 1920s.
The US dollar and many other currencies use the dollar sign $ as a symbol.
US currency features former presidents such as George Washington ($1 bill), Abraham
Lincoln ($5 bill), Andrew Jackson ($20 bill) and Benjamin Franklin ($100 bill).
Coins and banknotes are popular items for collectors, especially rare, old and misprinted
ones.
Inflation decreases the purchasing power of money over time.
Interesting Facts about Money
Money is king of every business. It is used by the humans for making transactions, for
paying debts or for buying goods. Without money, you are nothing. Everyone has its
own definition. We collected here some interesting information regarding the Money which
is really worth for you. Firstly, we go through some historical facts. After that you will get
aware with other informative and funny facts.
Some history facts about money
Before coming Notes, coins as form of money; Cattle were used by the some of the countries for
making transactions.
When first time coins were introduced as money, their value was measured by the weight.
First time value on the coin was printed by the Lydia which is presently known as Turkey.
Paper currency was invented by the China.
In 1690; First ever paper money was launched by the Massachusetts Bay Colony in America.
After the World War II, All countries accepted to use fiat currencies whose value fixed by the
U.S Dollar and value of Dollar is related with the Gold.

Lets take a look of some interesting and funny facts:
More than 60 communities of US have own form of currency which is used for local transactions
like New York, Berkshire Massachusetts etc.
You can change your dollar for other currency form of money in 233 ways.
In all over the world, more monopoly money had printed as compared to printing of ral money in
all over the world.
Weight of humming bird is about 2.5 gram which is exactly equal to the penny weight.
There are more chances to come tail on tossing a penny because of more weight of head
portion.
Paper used in making currency in America is not made up of trees; it is about 75 % cotton and
remaining is linen.
In some of the countries, Government started to impose tax on Gold and silver to collect tax
easier. Some of the public trying to cheat government by buying Gold and Silver so that they
have to pay tax less.
Invention of money makes easier for thefts.
Most of the US people spent money on cocaine; after that anything else.
How credit card was invented to replace the cash money
Once a time, Frank X. McNamara went with his friends on dinner but he forgot to bring
his violet with him. At that moment, he didnt want to feel embarrassing next time so, he
created Diners Club Card which was the first credit card. This incident took place in 1949
at New York. About 14 restaurants of that area participated in that scheme whose name
get printed on the back of card; first time annual fees was taken as $3.
In previous time, Most popular form of money among American and Indian was wampum which
was strings of clamshells.
What you can do in History money if your money (Currency notes) wass not in good
condition
In 1916, people used to go Washington D.C; because there was facility available to
wash, iron the notes not in good condition.
How you can use torn, trashed notes
Dont get panic if someone tore your note or note gets burned. Only you have to go to
Office of Currency Standards; where they replace the note if you provide them about 51
% of note. Office meets with 2 funny incidents regarding these issues;
Note found in the Shotgun which was fired by Gun Owner. Owner just forgot that he also hide
note there.
A cow found whose stomach was filled with the notes.
There is one wow fact regarding the color of notes; Most of the currencies notes are green
because of larger availability of green pigment.
Barter
The first people didn't buy goods from other people with money.
They used barter. Barter is the exchange of personal
possessions of value for other goods that you want. This kind of
exchange started at the beginning of humankind and is still
used today. From 9,000-6,000 B.C., livestock was often used as
a unit of exchange. Later, as agriculture developed, people used
crops for barter. For example, I could ask another farmer to
trade a pound of apples for a pound of bananas.
Shells
At about 1200 B.C. in China, cowry shells became the first
medium of exchange, or money. The cowry has served as
money throughout history even to the middle of this century.
First Metal Money
Silver
At about 500 B.C., pieces of silver were the earliest
coins. Eventually in time they took the appearance of today
and were imprinted with numerous gods and emperors to mark
their value. These coins were first shown in Lydia, or Turkey,
during this time, but the methods were used over and over
again, and further improved upon by the Greek, Persian,
Macedonian, and Roman empires. Not like Chinese coins, which
relied on base metals, these new coins were composed from
scarce metals such as bronze, gold, and silver, which had a lot
of intrinsic value.
Leather Currency
In 118 B.C., banknotes in the form of leather money were used in
China. One-foot square pieces of white deerskin edged in vivid
colors were exchanged for goods. This is believed to be the
beginning of a kind of paper money.
Noses
During the ninth century A.D., the Danes in Ireland had an
expression "To pay through the nose." It comes from the
practice of cutting the noses of those who were careless in
paying the Danish poll tax.
Paper Currency
From the ninth century to the fifteenth century A.D., in China,
the first actual paper currency was used as money. Through this
period the amount of currency skyrocketed causing severe
inflation. Unfortunately, in 1455 the use of the currency
vanished from China. European civilization still would not have
paper currency for many years.
Potlach
In 1500, North American Indians engaged in potlach, a term that
describes the exchange of gifts at banquets, dances, and
various rituals. Since the trading of gifts was so important in
figuring the leaders community status, potlach went out of
control as the gifts became more extravagant in an effort to
surpass others' gifts.
Wampum
In 1535, though likely well before this earliest recorded date,
strings of beads made from clam shells, called wampum, are
used by North American Indians as money. Wampum means
white, the color of the clam shells and the beads.
Gold Standard
In 1816, England made gold a benchmark of value. This meant
that the value of currency was pegged to a certain number of
ounces of gold. This would help to prevent inflation of currency.
The U.S. went on the gold standard in 1900.
Depression
Because of the depression of the 1930's, the U.S. began a world
wide movement to end tying currency to gold. Today, few
nations tie the value of their currency to the price of gold. Other
government and financial institutions now try to control
inflation.
Today
At present, nations continue to change their currencies. For
example, the U.S. has already changed its $100 and $20
banknotes. More changes are in the works.TomorrowTomorrow
is already here. Electronic money (or digital cash) is already
being exchanged over the Internet.
in and of itself, is nothing. It can be a shell, a metal coin, or a piece of paper with a
historic image on it, but the value that people place on it has nothing to do with the
physical value of the money. Money derives its value by being a medium of exchange, a
unit of measurement and a storehouse for wealth. Money allows people to trade goods
and services indirectly, understand the price of goods (prices written in dollar and cents
correspond with an amount in your wallet) and gives us a way to save for larger
purchases in the future.

Money is valuable merely because everyone knows everyone else will accept it as a form
of payment - so let's take a look at where it has been, how it evolved and how it is used
today. (To learn more about money itself, see What Is Money?)

A World Without Money
Money, in some form, has been part of human history for at least the last 3,000 years.
Before that time, it is assumed that a system of bartering was likely used.

Bartering is a direct trade of goods and services - I'll give you a stone axe if you help me
kill a mammoth - but such arrangements take time. You have to find someone who
thinks an axe is a fair trade for having to face the 12-foot tusks on a beast that doesn't
take kindly to being hunted. If that didn't work, you would have to alter the deal until
someone agreed to the terms. One of the great achievements of money was increasing
the speed at which business, whether mammoth slaying or monument building, could be
done.

Slowly, a type of prehistoric currency involving easily traded goods like animal skins, salt
and weapons developed over the centuries. These traded goods served as the medium of
exchange even though the unit values were still negotiable. This system of barter and
trade spread across the world, and it still survives today on some parts of the globe.
Learn to trade Forex with FXCMs Free Trading Guide
Oriental Cutlery
Sometime around 1,100 B.C., the Chinese moved from using actual tools and
weapons as a medium of exchange to using miniature replicas of the same tools
cast in bronze. Nobody wants to reach into their pocket and impale their hand on
a sharp arrow so, over time, these tiny daggers, spades and hoes were
abandoned for the less prickly shape of a circle, which became some of the first
coins. Although China was the first country to use recognizable coins, the first
minted coins were created not too far away in Lydia (now western Turkey).

Coins and Currency
In 600 B.C., Lydia's King Alyattes minted the first official currency. The coins
were made from electrum, a mixture of silver and gold that occurs naturally, and
stamped with pictures that acted as denominations. In the streets of Sardis, circa
600 B.C., a clay jar might cost you two owls and a snake. Lydia's currency helped
the country increase both its internal and external trade, making it one of the
richest empires in Asia Minor. It is interesting that when someone says, "as rich
as Croesus", they are referring to the last Lydian king who minted the first gold
coin. Unfortunately, minting the first coins and developing a strong trading
economy couldn't protect Lydia from the swords of the Persian army. (To read
more about gold, see What Is Wrong With Gold?)

Not Just a Piece of Paper
Just when it looked like Lydia was taking the lead in currency developments, in
600 B.C., the Chinese moved from coins to paper money. By the time Marco Polo
visited in 1,200 A.D., the emperor had a good handle on both money supply and
various denominations. In the place of where the American bills say, "In God We
Trust," the Chinese inscription warned, "All counterfeiters will be decapitated."

Europeans were still using coins all the way up to 1,600, helped along by
acquisitions of precious metals from colonies to keep minting more and more
cash. Eventually, the banks started using bank notes for depositors and
borrowers to carry around instead of coins. These notes could be taken to the
bank at any time and exchanged for their face values in silver or gold coins. This
paper money could be used to buy goods and operated much like currency today,
but it was issued by banks and private institutions, not the government, which is
now responsible for issuing currency in most countries.

The first paper currency issued by European governments was actually issued by
colonial governments in North America. Because shipments between Europe and
the colonies took so long, the colonists often ran out of cash as operations
expanded. Instead of going back to a barter system, the colonial governments
used IOUs that traded as a currency. The first instance was in Canada, then a
French colony. In 1685, soldiers were issued playing cards denominated and
signed by the governor to use as cash instead of coins from France.

Money Travels
The shift to paper money in Europe increased the amount of international trade
that could occur. Banks and the ruling classes started buying currencies from
other nations and created the first currency market. The stability of a particular
monarchy or government affected the value of the country's currency and the
ability for that country to trade on an increasingly international market. The
competition between countries often led to currency wars, where competing
countries would try to affect the value of the competitor's currency by driving it
up and making the enemy's goods too expensive, by driving it down and reducing
the enemy's buying power (and ability to pay for a war), or by eliminating the
currency completely.

Despite many advances, money still has a very real and permanent effect on how
we do business today. (Follow the development of money in the United States
in The History Of Money: Currency Wars.)
Money is anything that is commonly accepted by a group of people for the exchange of
goods, services, or resources. Every country has its own system of coins and paper money
In the beginning, people bartered. Barter is the exchange of a good or service for another good or
service, a bag of rice for a bag of beans. However, what if you couldn't agree what something was
worth in exchange or you didn't want what the other person had. To solve that problem humans
developed what is called commodity money.
A commodity is a basic item used by almost everyone. In the past, salt, tea, tobacco, cattle and
seeds were commodities and therefore were once used as money. However, using commodities as
money had other problems. Carrying bags of salt and other commodities was hard, and
commodities were difficult to store or were perishable.
Coins and Paper Money
Metals objects were introduced as money around 5000 B.C. By 700 BC, the Lydians became the
first in the Western world to make coins. Countries were soon minting their own series of coins
with specific values. Metal was used because it was readily available, easy to work with and could
be recycled. Since coins were given a certain value, it became easier to compare the cost of items
people wanted.
Some of the earliest known paper money dates back to China, where the issue of paper money
became common from about AD 960 onwards.
Representative Money
With the introduction of paper currency and non-precious coinage, commodity money evolved into
representative money. This meant that what money itself was made of no longer had to be very
valuable.
Representative money was backed by a government or bank's promise to exchange it for a certain
amount of silver or gold. For example, the old British Pound bill or Pound Sterling was once
guaranteed to be redeemable for a pound of sterling silver.
For most of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the majority of currencies were based on
representative money through the use of the gold standard.
Fiat Money
Representative money has now been replaced by fiat money. Fiat is the Latin word for "let it be
done". Money is now given value by a government fiat or decree, in other words enforceable legal
tender laws were made. By law the refusal of "legal tender" money in favor of some other form of
payment is illegal.
$$$
The origin of the "$" money sign is not certain. Many historians trace the $ money sign to either
the Mexican or Spanish "P's" for pesos, or piastres, or pieces of eight. The study of old manuscripts
shows that the "S," gradually came to be written over the "P," looking very much like the "$"
mark.
U.S. Money Trivia
On March 10, 1862 the first United States paper money was issued. The denominations
were $5, $10, and $20. They became legal tender by Act of March 17, 1862. The inclusion
of "In God We Trust" on all currency was required by law in 1955. The national motto first
appeared on paper money in 1957 on $1 Silver Certificates, and on all Federal Reserve
Notes beginning with Series 1963.
At first, coins were produced by merchants as a type of
credit system. Over time, the local city-states took over the
responsibility of manufacturing coin money. This new tool
allowed their economy to explode. Goods from all over the
world were shipped into the area, while other items were
shipped out.
The history of money shows us that it is a medium of exchange for trade. It can
be a medium of exchange because it has a clear value that is trusted by
everyone.

Money is also a way to store value for the future. So, for example, we can save
up our money to buy something expensive in the future.

Finally, money is also a unit of account. It can be counted easily and it enables a
clear value to be given to goods.
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