A Brief History of Money

Now that you've had a sneak peek into the enormous body of knowledge that blockchain technology manifests, it is a good time to take a step back and go back to the basics. In this chapter, we'll look at the history of money. If you can grasp how the financial sector reached its current state, then you will better understand why blockchain technology is the natural next step in monetary evolution.

The following topics will be covered in this chapter:

• An introduction to money
• Money – an abstraction of value
• An introduction to fiat currencies
• What happens when fiat currency systems fail
• How blockchain comes into the picture