Strange Forms Of Money

Strange Forms Of Money: Money is anything a community trusts as a way to pay, store value and keep score, and across history that has included giant stones, shells, salt, pelts, cheese, cigarettes and even canned fish.

Rai Stones of Yap: These limestone discs, some wider than a person is tall, were quarried on Palau hundreds of kilometers away, and ownership could change hands without the stone ever moving, including one said to rest on the seafloor.

Cowrie Shells: Harvested largely in the Maldives, these shells served as money across Africa and Asia for centuries, and the Chinese character for shell still appears in many words related to money and trade.

Salarium: The word 'salary' comes from Latin sal for salt, but historians say the popular claim that Roman soldiers were paid in salt has little solid evidence behind it.

Amole: Hard bars of rock salt, quarried in the Danakil Depression, were used as currency in Ethiopia well into the 20th century.

Croatian Kuna: Croatia's currency until it adopted the euro in 2023 was named for the marten, because medieval Slavic lands used marten and squirrel pelts as money.

Hudson's Bay Company: Its fur trade ran on the 'Made Beaver,' a unit equal to one prime beaver pelt, and the company even minted brass tokens stamped with the value.

Wampum: Strings of shell beads made by Indigenous peoples of the Northeast became legal tender in the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1637, with white beads rated at six to a penny.

Jamestown: In colonial Virginia tobacco served as money, and in 1619 men paid about 120 pounds of it to cover the passage of women who came to the colony as prospective wives.

Kissi Penny: Long twisted iron rods served as money in West Africa, and one that broke was believed to lose its value until it was ritually restored.

Katanga Cross: Cast copper ingots shaped like an X were used as currency and bridewealth in the copper belt of central Africa for centuries.

Manilla: These horseshoe shaped metal bracelets circulated as money in West Africa for centuries, and British authorities in Nigeria recalled over 32 million of them during Operation Manilla in 1948 and 1949.

Tally Sticks: The English Exchequer recorded debts on notched wooden sticks until 1826, and burning the leftover stockpile in 1834 started the fire that destroyed the old Palace of Westminster.

Knife Money: Ancient Chinese states cast bronze coins in the shape of small knives, complete with a ring on the handle, a nod to the real tools once used in trade.

Iron Money of Sparta: Plutarch says Lycurgus replaced gold and silver with heavy iron bars quenched in vinegar to make them brittle, so a modest sum needed a cart and a yoke of oxen to move.

Cacao Beans: The Aztecs used cacao beans as small change, and Spanish chroniclers reported counterfeiters who hollowed out the beans and stuffed them with dirt.

Tevau: Santa Cruz Islanders in the Solomon Islands made money from long coils covered in tiny red feathers of the scarlet honeyeater, with each coil needing feathers from hundreds of birds.

Tea Brick: Compressed blocks of tea served as currency across Tibet, Mongolia and Siberia into the 20th century, handy because you could also brew your change.

Card Money of New France: In 1685, with no coins arriving from France, the colony's intendant Jacques de Meulles paid soldiers with playing cards cut up and signed as IOUs.

R. A. Radford: The British economist described in a 1945 paper how cigarettes became the standard currency in his WWII prisoner of war camp, complete with inflation and price swings.

Mack (prison currency): After US federal prisons banned smoking in 2004, pouches of mackerel replaced cigarettes as the standard inmate currency, reportedly because few inmates actually wanted to eat them.

1970 Irish Bank Strike: When banks shut for about six months, the Irish economy kept running on personal checks passed around like cash, with pubs acting as informal clearing houses.

Canadian Tire Money: The retailer's paper coupons, issued since 1958, became so trusted that some businesses accepted them like real cash.

Credito Emiliano: This Italian bank accepts wheels of Parmigiano Reggiano as loan collateral and ages hundreds of thousands of them in its climate controlled vaults.

Bitcoin Pizza Day: On May 22, 2010 programmer Laszlo Hanyecz paid 10,000 bitcoin for two pizzas, the first well known real world purchase with the digital currency.