The Origins of the Gold System

The more of us there are, the harder it is to have gold be the thing that is the standard. The innovation was you basically put that gold in a big old box and you keep that box nice and safe. And then you create an avatar or a stand in for that gold in the world. So you create this gold backed system. You still had gold, so nations still had to have a reserve of gold, but they were no longer moving gold around. They were transacting sales in paper. That paper had a promise attached to it that paper was good for a certain amount of gold or silver. If your ship sinks and it was like filled with bank notes of the, of