What is a currency?

By its most common definition, it refers to “money” in any form as a medium of exchange for goods and services.

Grains & Livestock:

Barter system is the earliest encounter of a currency as means of exchanging goods and services. This all translates to anything considered of value such as food, weapons, materials, clothing, tools, property, housewares and etc. With time barter system evolved to specific items as it was the easiest to measure those in the marketplace such as livestock and grains.

Metal Coins:

Societies in Asia later started to use the regions mineral rich deposits as the new method of currency. Mesopotamia and Egypt started to experiment with metal currency in forms of gold, silver, copper and tin. These first coins were made of a mixture of gold and silver known as Electrum. In Africa, many forms of value store have been used, including beads, ingots, ivory, ocher and other earth oxides.

Fiat & Banknotes:

The Chinese were the first to manufacture paper around the world, using materials such as linen, mulberry, hemp and bamboo. With this new development and the troublesome of carrying copper coins in abundance; they started to write credit notes on paper as a means of temporary transaction which later became the light-weight paper currency we know today. Unlike previous currencies, paper money required the backing of some other asset.

Credit Cards, Venmo, & M-Pesa:

Fast-forward to few decades ago to the evolution of digital methods of payment for easier, light-weight and faster transaction exchanges. M-Pesa- a mobile phone-based money transfer which operates in East Africa enables buying and selling goods and services via mobile app, whether it is livestock, groceries, clothing and etc.

Cryptocurrency:

With the new modern era of cryptocurrency we are seeing another wave in the evolution of currency. Unlike the old methods that are controlled government-issued currency, now we have a private decentralized currency for the people by the people. As cryptocurrency gains popularity we will see a large adoption by the masses and the governments.

“Something is only worth what someone is willing to pay for it” Publilius Syrus

This article is merely for information and is not an investment advice. This article only touches on the “currency” aspect of cryptocurrency and not the technology(blockchain). #DYOR #blockchain #cryptocurrency #bitcoin#ethereum #neo #gigapp

Gigapp- Decentralized marketplace for goods and services. http://www.gigapp.io

By: Hamid Shariff