NEW YORK, NY / ACCESSWIRE / January 16, 2019 / Welcome back to both our cryptocurrency and diamond enthusiasts and a warm welcome to our new readers. When we look at the world at large, we often fail to realize just how remarkable the systems of monetary exchange & trade we use today really is. From bank accounts to credit cards to even the often overlooked invention of paper money. We just don't typically consider it to be relatively spectacular as that's how we have always handled things as far as we can remember. Think about it: Could you imagine a world without banknotes and coins?

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However, that wasn't always the case. Let's leap back in time and explore the surprisingly brief history of money together. We really believe it will help emphasize the importance of how cryptocurrency is changing the world in a revolutionary manner.

Back when trade was first being established, the concept of money took root. Be it through paper bills, coins, cowrie shells, and even enormous rounded boulders, money has always required two primary things to be considered, well, money. Those two things being scarcity and liquidity.

Liquidity is our foremost requirement when discussing money. It's the idea that you can spend that money and your medium of exchange for goods and services can be honored anywhere, and that you can divide it down as needed to make smaller purchases. Imagine sitting in a cafe and discussing with your neighbor that the little slip of paper in your hand is now worth the same as the computer he's reading this on or is worth the same as one hundred cups of coffee in the store you are sitting at. If you agree on the relative value of the money, then you have a uniformly liquid asset.

Scarcity is our second requirement, since what we are using as money shouldn't be easily replicable. If you can't create copies of it or just pick it up off the street anywhere you go, then you have scarcity. It should also have a material rarity to it and be durable enough to go through many transactions without falling apart to the point that its value cannot be determined. If you can easily counterfeit the currency, there's really nothing stopping someone from creating millions on their own to spend, leading to hyperinflation and drastically reducing the value of all 'money' in circulation.

Longtime readers of ours will know just how nasty that can get.

Culture eventually settled on a predominant currency with a few outliers. Most of the time, that currency was gold and silver. Great land and sea expeditions were sent forth to either bring back goods to sell for more gold, or to search for the beautiful metal itself. Giant trade fleets were formed and great wars were waged over the accumulation of gold & silver. Eventually, regular trade routes were formed. These gave us the ability to spread the dominance of these currencies through the world as trade with certain companies and fleets became popular. Spanish, English, and Portuguese colonies sprung up where people gathered for these fleet's main stops along their trade routes.

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Now, that remained relatively unchanged for a long while until the Chinese exported the concept of paper money to the Western world. This brought forth easier transactions and ways to keep large amounts of money without having a huge bag of coins jingling from your belt.

Let's take another jump ahead of our mercantile friends and visit the modern era. Technological advancement has exploded, we now have the car, the phone, the microprocessor, and more importantly, we've been able to spend and transact with money like never before. With wire transfers, online banking, and debit cards now becoming commonplace, making transactions has become easier in the last 100 years than it has been in the last millennia. Even though the march of progress, cracks start to form and we start seeing the drawbacks of easy spending.

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