Before national fiat, silver coins and gold set prices across oceans. This pillar gathers historical money and precious metals on this site, and places every currency's origin on one timeline.
Metals & vanished money
Spanish dollar
The silver coin that priced global trade from Manila to Mexico City to China.
Reserve weight 0 🏛️Roman denarius
The silver backbone of Republican and early Imperial Roman money.
Reserve weight 0 📜Reichsmark
Germany's interwar and wartime currency — born from hyperinflation, ended in 1948 reform.
Reserve weight 0 🥇 XAUGold
The metal that defined monetary standards from antiquity through Bretton Woods.
Reserve weight 35 🥈 XAGSilver
The workhorse monetary metal of empires — from denarii to pieces of eight to rupees.
Reserve weight 15Timeline
The real de a ocho, reformed under the Catholic Monarchs, became the world's first truly global trade coin.
The Coinage Act of 1792 created the dollar as the United States unit of account, defining it in silver and gold and founding the Philadelphia Mint.
Independent Mexico continued the peso of eight reales; the modern nuevo peso (MXN) arrived in 1993 after inflation.
The Ottoman lira was introduced in 1844; the Republic kept the name, later striking six zeros in the 2005 new lira reform.
The federal Swiss franc replaced cantonal currencies after the 1848 constitution, aligning Switzerland with the French franc system.
Decimal Canadian dollars replaced sterling accounting in the Province of Canada in 1858, later becoming the dominion's currency.
Hong Kong adopted a silver dollar standard in the 1860s; note-issuing banks later defined the modern Hong Kong dollar.
The New Currency Act of 1871 adopted the yen, replacing the complex Tokugawa coinage with a modern decimal unit modelled on Western practice.
Sweden joined the Scandinavian Monetary Union in 1873, introducing the krona to replace the riksdaler.
King Chulalongkorn's reforms decimalised Siamese currency; the baht became the modern unit replacing the old tical system.
The Reichsmark replaced the worthless Papiermark after the 1923 hyperinflation, restoring a gold-linked unit under the Dawes framework.
Saudi Arabia unified coinage in the 1920s–30s; the modern riyal became the kingdom's standard unit tied to oil revenue cycles.
The People's Bank of China issued the renminbi in 1948 as the Communists unified currency ahead of founding the PRC.
The New Taiwan dollar replaced the old Taiwan dollar in 1949 at 40,000 to 1, stabilising prices after the Chinese Civil War retreat.
The rand replaced the South African pound at decimalisation when the Republic was declared in 1961.
The modern South Korean won was introduced in 1962 at 10 hwan to 1 won, resetting the post-war currency after hyperinflation and reform.
Australia decimalised on 14 February 1966, replacing the Australian pound with the dollar at two dollars to the pound.
After the Currency Board era shared with Malaysia, Singapore issued its own dollar in 1967 under the Board of Commissioners of Currency.
The UAE dirham replaced the Qatar and Dubai riyal in 1973 after federation, later settling into a hard dollar peg.
The convertible peso replaced the austral in 1992 at 10,000 to 1, initially pegged one-to-one to the US dollar.
The real launched on 1 July 1994 under the Plano Real, replacing the cruzeiro real and anchoring prices with a new unit.
The euro launched as book money on 1 January 1999 for eleven EU members; euro banknotes and coins followed in 2002.
Rome introduced the denarius during the Second Punic War, creating a silver unit that structured Mediterranean prices for centuries.
The ruble began as a unit of silver weight in medieval Rus'; imperial and Soviet reforms repeatedly redefined the modern note.
Sher Shah Suri standardised a silver rupiya in the 1540s; the name and silver standard shaped later Mughal and British Indian coinage.
Electrum and then gold coins from Lydia and Persia began the long career of gold as coined money and later as a reserve anchor.
Silver coinage spread from the Greek world and Near East as the everyday monetary metal alongside scarcer gold.
Sterling traces to silver pennies of the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms; the pound as 240 pence became the accounting unit of medieval England.