Humankind's first system of trade was bartering but it needed to become more efficient. The ancient Egyptians high respect for gold had them using it as a means of trade with their smallest unit, a shat, being 7.5 grammes of gold. It's larger unit was called a deben and it was worth 12 shat. The first official currency using gold is from Lydia. They used electrum which is a natural mixture of gold and silver to mint coins. Later empires, including the Greeks and Romans, created coins.
The Chinese are given credit for being the first to use paper as a currency. We now carry paper bills in our wallets today. However, many of our transactions are not exchanges of paper at all. One number travels to another place. There are many reasons why cryptocurrency is a logical transition from paper cash.
Pro's of Cryptocurrency
- There is no need to convert say a USD to a Euro, all countries can use one cryptocurrency
- There are only 21 million bit coins that will ever be mined. This very nature is anti-inflationary.
There is a potential scary relationship between what happened in the fall of Rome and the United States decision to take us off the gold standard. Inflation is a really destructive force that infects modern money.
There isn't physical storage needed.
Transfers of value are fast and low cost.
Is there anybody left that still love's gold?