Timeline of Money
Money from weighed silver and cowrie shells through the first coins, Chinese paper money, the gold standard and fiat currency to mobile money, bitcoin and stablecoin law, from about 2100 BCE to 2025.
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- 33 events ~2100 BCE – 2025
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- by claude-opus-5-5
~2100 BCE: Ur-Nammu standardizes the silver shekel
Long before coins, Mesopotamians used barley and silver weighed in shekels as money. The prologue to the oldest known surviving law code, credited to Ur-Nammu of Ur (r. 2112 – 2095 BCE), though some scholars attribute it to his son Shulgi, says the king standardized the mina and fixed the weight of a shekel of silver against it, 60 shekels to the mina; its laws set fines in silver for injuries.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code_of_Ur-Nammu~1200 BCE: Cowrie shells serve as wealth in Shang China
The tomb of Fu Hao, a consort and general of the Shang king Wu Ding, held nearly 7,000 cowrie shells, and Shang and Zhou inscriptions record kings giving strings of cowries as rewards. Scholars debate how far they served as money rather than prestige gifts, but the character for cowrie forms part of Chinese characters for buying, price and wealth, and cowries later circulated as money in India and West Africa, in places into the 20th century.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shell_money~640 – 550 BCE: Chinese states cast bronze spade money
In the Zhou royal domain and neighboring states of the Central Plain, bronze money was cast in the shape of spades too thin to dig with, while knife-shaped money spread in the northeast. Radiocarbon dating of a foundry at Guanzhuang in Henan, published in 2021, made it the oldest securely dated mint yet found.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spade_money~630 BCE: Lydians strike coins of electrum
In Lydia, in western Anatolia, and nearby Greek cities of Ionia, lumps of electrum, a natural alloy of gold and silver, were stamped with designs such as a lion's head. Coins buried beneath the Temple of Artemis at Ephesus in the late 7th century BCE are among the earliest known, with estimates for the first issues from about 650 to 600 BCE. Their gold content varied, and King Croesus (reigned about 561 – 546 BCE) later replaced them with separate coins of refined gold and silver.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_coins6th – 4th century BCE: Indian states issue punch-marked silver coins
States of the Indian subcontinent, from the kingdoms of the Ganges plain to Gandhara, issued pieces of silver cut to a standard weight and stamped with symbols by separate punches, known as karshapanas; the Maurya Empire later issued them in large numbers. Their start is disputed: the Reserve Bank of India's museum dates the first to the 7th–6th century BCE, while the numismatist Joe Cribb argues the technique came from Persia's Achaemenid Empire in the 4th century BCE.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Punch-marked_coins221 – 210 BCE: Qin Shi Huang standardizes China's coinage
After the state of Qin conquered its rivals, the first emperor abolished the spade, knife and cowrie money of the other states, keeping gold as the higher currency and making the bronze banliang, a round coin with a square hole, the lower; sources disagree on whether the decree came at unification or about a decade later. Round cash coins strung through their holes remained China's basic coin until the early 20th century.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banliang~211 BCE: Rome introduces the silver denarius
During the Second Punic War, Rome overhauled its coinage and introduced the denarius, about 4.5 grams of silver and at first worth ten bronze asses, hence its name, "containing ten". Steadily debased, it remained the standard Roman silver coin until the mid-3rd century CE, and its name lives on in the dinar and in words for money such as Spanish dinero and Italian denaro.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denarius~312: Constantine introduces the gold solidus
By about 300 the Roman silver coinage had been debased to a few percent silver, and Diocletian's Edict on Maximum Prices of 301 failed to halt inflation. Building on a small issue by Diocletian, Constantine the Great struck a gold coin at 72 to the Roman pound, about 4.5 grams; as the Byzantine nomisma it kept its weight and purity for about seven centuries, until debasement in the 11th century.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solidus696 – 697: Abd al-Malik issues the Islamic gold dinar
The Umayyad caliph Abd al-Malik ibn Marwan replaced Byzantine and Sasanian-style coins with an Islamic coinage. After early dinars showing the caliph, the reformed dinar of one mithqal, about 4.25 grams, carried only Arabic religious inscriptions and no images, and a matching silver dirham followed in 698; dinars and dirhams became the standard coins of the Islamic world from Spain to Central Asia.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gold_dinar793 – 794: Charlemagne sets the pound of 240 pennies
Charlemagne's coinage reform made a silver penny, the denarius or denier, the standard coin of the Frankish realm, struck at 240 to a new pound of silver of about 408 grams, with the solidus or shilling of 12 pennies kept as a unit of account. The ratio of 1 pound to 20 shillings to 240 pence spread across much of Europe and survived in Britain and Ireland until decimalization on February 15, 1971.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carolingian_monetary_system1024: Song China issues government paper money
In Sichuan, where heavy iron coins circulated, merchants in Chengdu had begun issuing paper deposit receipts called jiaozi. After several issuers failed, the Song government took over note issue through a Jiaozi Bureau and printed its first standard series, generally regarded as the first government-issued paper money; Tang merchants had earlier used "flying cash", drafts payable in distant cities. Overissue later fed repeated inflation.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jiaozi_(currency)1252: Florence mints the gold florin
Florence began striking the gold florin as Genoa introduced its gold genovino. The florin's stable weight and fineness made it important in European trade and banking, and other cities and rulers copied it. It helped restore large-scale gold coinage in western Europe; Byzantine and Islamic gold currencies had continued circulating elsewhere, and Venice's ducat followed in 1284.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Florin1260: Kublai Khan makes paper the main currency
In the first year of his reign as Great Khan, Kublai issued Zhongtong notes and made paper the principal currency of his Chinese realm, the first time paper had served as China's predominant circulating money. Marco Polo and Ibn Battuta described the notes to readers in Europe and the Islamic world; overissue later caused severe inflation, and a copy introduced in Ilkhanid Persia in 1294 quickly failed.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jiaochao~1519: Joachimsthal coin gives the dollar its name
The Counts of Schlick struck silver from mines opened in 1516 at Joachimsthal in Bohemia, now Jáchymov in the Czech Republic, into large coins of about 29 grams called Joachimsthalers; sources date the first issues from 1518 to 1520, when the mint gained official approval. Shortened to thaler, the name became daalder in Dutch and dollar in English. Tyrol had first struck coins of this size in quantity, the Guldengroschen, in 1486.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thaler1545: Spaniards begin mining Potosí's silver mountain
Spanish colonists began working Cerro Rico above Potosí, in what is now Bolivia, and from the 1570s, under Viceroy Francisco de Toledo, raised output with mercury amalgamation and the mita, a forced labor draft of Indigenous workers. Struck into the eight-real piece of eight, or Spanish dollar, silver from Potosí and Mexico circulated from Europe to China and was the model for the US dollar; historians debate how much it, rather than population growth, drove Europe's 16th-century Price Revolution.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cerro_Rico~1580: Ming China moves its taxes onto silver
The single whip reform, tried locally earlier in the century and extended across the empire under the senior grand secretary Zhang Juzheng, commuted most land taxes and labor duties into one payment in silver. Ming paper money, first issued in 1375, had collapsed through overprinting, and the reform made China a vast market for silver from Japan and from Spanish America, shipped across the Pacific to Manila by galleons from Acapulco.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_whip_law1661: Stockholms Banco issues Europe's first banknotes
Johan Palmstruch's bank in Stockholm, founded in 1657, began issuing transferable credit notes in round sums, payable in coin on demand and not tied to any deposit, which the Riksbank describes as the first real banknotes in Europe. Popular because Sweden's copper coins were huge and heavy, they were overissued; the bank could not redeem them, ceased operating in 1664 and was succeeded in 1668 by the parliament's bank, now Sveriges Riksbank.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stockholms_Banco1690: Massachusetts Bay issues paper bills of credit
With troops demanding pay after a failed expedition against Quebec, Massachusetts issued paper bills of credit that could be used to pay taxes. Other British North American colonies later adopted similar money. Government-issued paper substitutes already had a precedent in New France, where officials had paid troops with playing-card money from 1685.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_American_currency1792: Congress creates a decimal US dollar
The Coinage Act, passed on April 2, established the United States Mint and made the dollar, divided decimally into dimes, cents and mills, the unit of account, with "the value of a Spanish milled dollar" then in wide circulation. It set a bimetallic standard, defining gold and silver coins at a ratio of 15 to 1 by weight; France followed with the decimal franc in 1795.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coinage_Act_of_17921816: Britain puts the pound on gold
The Coinage Act, or Liverpool's Act, made gold the sole standard of value and limited silver coins to payments of up to 40 shillings; the gold sovereign followed in 1817, and Bank of England notes, inconvertible since 1797, became redeemable in gold again on May 1, 1821. Britain had drifted onto a de facto gold standard after a December 1717 proclamation, based on advice from Isaac Newton as Master of the Mint, fixed the gold guinea at 21 shillings, overvaluing gold against silver.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coinage_Act_18161873: Germany adopts the gold mark
Aided by a 5 billion franc indemnity from France after the Franco-Prussian War, the new German Empire replaced its silver thalers and gulden with a gold mark: a law of December 1871 created gold 10- and 20-mark coins, and the Coinage Act of July 9 made the mark the unit of account. The switch pushed the Latin Monetary Union, the United States and Scandinavia toward gold, beginning the international classical gold standard that lasted until 1914.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_mark_(1871)1923: German paper mark collapses in hyperinflation
Germany had funded World War I largely by borrowing, and after France and Belgium occupied the Ruhr in January the government printed money to support striking workers; by November a US dollar cost about 4.2 trillion paper marks. The Rentenmark, issued on November 15 and fixed at one trillion old marks, and a halt to central bank lending to the government ended the episode. Historians still debate the role of reparations; Hungary's hyperinflation of 1945 – 1946 was the most extreme on record.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperinflation_in_the_Weimar_Republic1934: United States lowers the dollar's gold value
The Gold Reserve Act transferred monetary gold to the US Treasury, consolidating the suspension of domestic gold convertibility begun in 1933. President Franklin D. Roosevelt then raised the official gold price from $20.67 to $35 per troy ounce, reducing the dollar's gold value. The new parity later anchored the Bretton Woods monetary system.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gold_Reserve_Act1944: Bretton Woods conference ties currencies to the dollar
Delegates from 44 Allied countries meeting at Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, in July agreed that currencies would be pegged, within narrow adjustable bands, to the US dollar, which foreign governments and central banks could convert into gold at $35 an ounce. They created the International Monetary Fund and what became the World Bank; John Maynard Keynes's plan for a world currency, the bancor, lost out to the American plan of Harry Dexter White.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bretton_Woods_system1958: Bank of America launches the BankAmericard
Bank of America mailed unsolicited BankAmericard credit cards to residents of Fresno, California, allowing purchases at many merchants to be repaid over time. The program expanded through licenses to other banks and became Visa. Rival banks formed the Interbank Card Association in 1966, the organization that developed into Mastercard.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Credit_card#BankAmericard_and_Master_Charge1971: Nixon closes the gold window
On August 15, facing rising inflation and a run on US gold reserves, Richard Nixon suspended the dollar's convertibility into gold for foreign governments and central banks, alongside a 90-day wage and price freeze and a 10 percent import surcharge. Attempts to restore fixed rates failed, major currencies were floating by 1973, and the Jamaica Accords of 1976 formally ended the Bretton Woods system, leaving a world of fiat currencies.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nixon_shock1999: The euro launches as a single currency
On January 1, eleven European Union members locked their exchange rates and adopted the euro, run by the new European Central Bank, for accounts, bonds and electronic payments; euro notes and coins replaced national cash on January 1, 2002. Greece joined in 2001, and with Bulgaria's entry on January 1, 2026, the euro area grew to 21 members.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_euro2007: Safaricom launches M-Pesa in Kenya
Safaricom, Kenya's largest mobile network operator, and Vodafone launched M-Pesa nationally in March after a pilot backed by a UK government fund, letting users store money on their phones, send it by text message and cash in or out at shop agents. A 2016 study in Science by Tavneet Suri and William Jack estimated it lifted 2 percent of Kenyan households out of extreme poverty, a finding later contested, and the service spread to Tanzania, Mozambique and other countries.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M-Pesa2008: Satoshi Nakamoto publishes the bitcoin white paper
On October 31, a paper titled "Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System" by the pseudonymous Satoshi Nakamoto, whose identity remains unknown, was posted to a cryptography mailing list. Building on earlier digital cash and proof-of-work ideas, it proposed a currency with no central issuer, recorded on a public ledger; the network began on January 3, 2009, when Nakamoto mined the first block, embedding a Times headline about a second bank bailout.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_bitcoin2016: India launches the Unified Payments Interface
The National Payments Corporation of India, overseen by the Reserve Bank of India, piloted the Unified Payments Interface (UPI) on April 11, letting phone users send money instantly between bank accounts with a simple ID, and bank apps followed in August. UPI handled more than 20 billion transactions in August 2025, and Brazil's central bank launched a comparable instant payment system, Pix, in November 2020.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unified_Payments_Interface2020: The Bahamas launches the Sand Dollar
On October 20 the Central Bank of The Bahamas began the nationwide rollout of the Sand Dollar, a digital form of the Bahamian dollar. Distributed through authorized financial institutions, it aimed to expand access to payments across the island nation. The launch preceded national central bank digital currencies in Nigeria and Jamaica.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_bank_digital_currency2021: El Salvador makes bitcoin legal tender
Under a law pushed by President Nayib Bukele, El Salvador on September 7 became the first country to make bitcoin legal tender, alongside the US dollar, requiring businesses to accept it and offering citizens $30 in bitcoin through a government wallet, Chivo. Use stayed low, and as part of a $1.4 billion loan deal with the International Monetary Fund, lawmakers voted on January 29, 2025, to make accepting bitcoin voluntary and bar tax payments in it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bitcoin_in_El_Salvador2025: Trump signs the GENIUS Act on stablecoins
Signed by President Donald Trump on July 18 after bipartisan votes in both houses of Congress, the Guiding and Establishing National Innovation for U.S. Stablecoins Act created the first federal framework for payment stablecoins, privately issued tokens pegged to the dollar. Issuers must hold one-for-one reserves in dollars or similar liquid assets such as short-term Treasury bills and publish monthly reserve reports; the European Union had applied comparable stablecoin rules since mid-2024.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GENIUS_Act