History of Money

Money is the most powerful fiction ever created. It has no inherent value — it works only because we all agree it does. This timeline traces the improbable journey from the first coins stamped in Lydian electrum to the abstract digital tokens mined by algorithms. Along the way, every innovation — paper money, central banks, the gold standard, fiat currency, credit cards, Bitcoin — required humanity to extend its trust a little further into the abstract. Each leap was met with suspicion, each crash with calls for return to "real" money. Yet the direction has always been the same: toward more abstraction, more trust, more fiction. And somehow, it works.