ounterfeit currency in its original form, that is, as coinage. Currency in the form of coins evolved as a standardization of the barter system. When one trades wheat for milk, that is a straightforward exchange, dependent only upon how much the other party values what one has to offer. As life grew complex, easy equations of value lost their significance without a standard against which to compare these barter offerings. Metal ingots - particularly gold and silver - were generally settled upon as the standard of exchange. Coinage developed as a simple method of setting standardized sizes of those metals, to simplify the process of exchange. Somewhere around 700 B.C. the first crude images were stamped upon coins as a further degree of value identification - and to identify the source of the coinage: the governing power.
Up until this century, most coinage was a simple extension of the barter valuation: a gold coin worth one dollar, for example, contained one dollar's worth of gold (plus the value of its alloy, if any). The act of minting a coin
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