Money

From cowrie shells to Bitcoin — every century has a moment it redefined what money is.

15 posts· 3000 BCE – 1717

• Newton's guinea, or how a mathematician's arithmetic error invented the gold standard 1717
• The Bank of England, or the twelve-day loan that never ended 1694
• The Amsterdam Wisselbank, or where money learned to live in a ledger 1609
• Luca Pacioli's Summa and the double-entry ledger 1494
• The Medici Bank and the invention of modern finance 1397
• Marco Polo and the money made of trees 1271
• The jiaozi, or what happens when your money needs its own ox cart 1023
• The Arab dinar, or the coin that erased the emperor's face 696 CE
• The Byzantine solidus: the gold coin that ran the medieval world 312 CE
• The aureus and the long debasement 49 BCE
• The Roman denarius, or the coin that named money 211 BCE
• The ban liang, or the coin that outlasted its empire 221 BCE
• The Lydian stater 610 BCE
• The shell that circled the world 1250 BCE
• The Mesopotamian shekel, or how a weight became money 3000 BCE