The use of commodity money can be traced to the cultures of the Bronze Age c 3300 BC, with bronze, silver and gold being the most prominent. However, the first commodity to satisfy all the functions of money wa

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Ancient Greece
The first metal used as a currency was silver, more than 4,000 years ago, when silver ingots were used in trade. During the heyday of the Athenian empire, the city's silver tetradrachm was the first coin to achieve "international

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Imperial China
China had long used silver ingots as a medium of exchange, along with the cast copper-alloy cash. The use of silver ingots can be traced back as far

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Since the time that silver was discovered by the Spanish in the New World in the 16th century, until the latter half of the 19th century, the value of gold

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• Bimetallism
• Digital gold currency
• Executive Order 11110
• Free silver

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In 1717, the master of the Royal Mint, Sir Isaac Newton, introduced a new mint ratio as between silver and gold, and this had the effect of putting Britain onto a de facto gold standard. Following the Napoleonic Wars, the United Kingdom introduced the gold sovereign coin

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