Currency ((INSTALL))

Also known as the mid-market rate, the spot rate or the real exchange rate, the interbank rate is the exchange rate used by banks and large institutions when trading large volumes of foreign currency with one another. It is not made for individuals and smaller businesses, as smaller money transfers tend to attract a higher mark-up, so that the exchange offering the service can make a profit.

Currency

One can classify currencies into three monetary systems: fiat money, commodity money, and representative money, depending on what guarantees a currency's value (the economy at large vs. the government's physical metal reserves). Some currencies function as legal tender in certain jurisdictions, or for specific purposes, such as payment to a government (taxes), or government agencies (fees, fines). Others simply get traded for their economic value.

Digital currency has arisen with the popularity of computers and the Internet. Whether government-backed digital notes and coins (such as the digital renminbi in China, for example) will be successfully developed and utilized remains dubious.[5] Decentralized digital currencies, such as cryptocurrencies, are different because they are not issued by a government monetary authority; specifically, bitcoin, the first cryptocurrency and leader in terms of market capitalization, has a fixed supply and is therefore ostensibly deflationary. Many warnings issued by various countries note the opportunities that cryptocurrencies create for illegal activities such as scams, ransomware, money laundering and terrorism.[6]In 2014, the United States IRS issued a statement explaining that virtual currency is treated as property for Federal income-tax purposes, and it provide examples of how long-standing tax principles applicable to transactions involving property apply to virtual currency.[7]

In this first stage of currency, metals were used as symbols to represent value stored in the form of commodities. This formed the basis of trade in the Fertile Crescent for over 1500 years. However, the collapse of the Near Eastern trading system pointed to a flaw: in an era where there was no place that was safe to store value, the value of a circulating medium could only be as sound as the forces that defended that store. A trade could only reach as far as the credibility of that military. By the late Bronze Age, however, a series of treaties had established safe passage for merchants around the Eastern Mediterranean, spreading from Minoan Crete and Mycenae in the northwest to Elam and Bahrain in the southeast. It is not known what was used as a currency for these exchanges, but it is thought that oxhide-shaped ingots of copper, produced in Cyprus, may have functioned as a currency.

It is thought that the increase in piracy and raiding associated with the Bronze Age collapse, possibly produced by the Peoples of the Sea, brought the trading system of oxhide ingots to an end. It was only the recovery of Phoenician trade in the 10th and 9th centuries BC that led to a return to prosperity, and the appearance of real coinage, possibly first in Anatolia with Croesus of Lydia and subsequently with the Greeks and Persians. In Africa, many forms of value store have been used, including beads, ingots, ivory, various forms of weapons, livestock, the manilla currency, and ochre and other earth oxides. The manilla rings of West Africa were one of the currencies used from the 15th century onwards to sell slaves. African currency is still notable for its variety, and in many places, various forms of barter still apply.

In Europe, paper currency was first introduced on a regular basis in Sweden in 1661 (although Washington Irving records an earlier emergency use of it, by the Spanish in a siege during the Conquest of Granada). As Sweden was rich in copper, many copper coins were in circulation, but its relatively low value necessitated extraordinarily big coins, often weighing several kilograms.

The advantages of paper currency were numerous: it reduced the need to transport gold and silver, which was risky; it facilitated loans of gold or silver at interest, since the underlying specie (money in the form of gold or silver coins rather than notes) never left the possession of the lender until someone else redeemed the note; and it allowed a division of currency into credit- and specie-backed forms. It enabled the sale of investment in joint-stock companies and the redemption of those shares in a paper.

But there were also disadvantages. First, since a note has no intrinsic value, there was nothing to stop issuing authorities from printing more notes than they had specie to back them with. Second, because this increased the money supply, it increased inflationary pressures, a fact observed by David Hume in the 18th century. Thus paper money would often lead to an inflationary bubble, which could collapse if people began demanding hard money, causing the demand for paper notes to fall to zero. The printing of paper money was also associated with wars, and financing of wars, and therefore regarded as part of maintaining a standing army. For these reasons, paper currency was held in suspicion and hostility in Europe and America. It was also addictive since the speculative profits of trade and capital creation were quite large. Major nations established mints to print money and mint coins, and branches of their treasury to collect taxes and hold gold and silver stock.

At that time, both silver and gold were considered a legal tender and accepted by governments for taxes. However, the instability in the exchange rate between the two grew over the course of the 19th century, with the increases both in the supply of these metals, particularly silver, and in trade. The parallel use of both metals is called bimetallism, and the attempt to create a bimetallic standard where both gold and silver backed currency remained in circulation occupied the efforts of inflationists. Governments at this point could use currency as an instrument of policy, printing paper currency such as the United States greenback, to pay for military expenditures. They could also set the terms at which they would redeem notes for specie, by limiting the amount of purchase, or the minimum amount that could be redeemed.

By 1900, most of the industrializing nations were on some form of gold standard, with paper notes and silver coins constituting the circulating medium. Private banks and governments across the world followed Gresham's law: keeping the gold and silver they received but paying out in notes. This did not happen all around the world at the same time, but occurred sporadically, generally in times of war or financial crisis, beginning in the early 20th century and continuing across the world until the late 20th century, when the regime of floating fiat currencies came into force. One of the last countries to break away from the gold standard was the United States in 1971, an action which was known as the Nixon shock. No country has an enforceable gold standard or silver standard currency system.

A banknote or a bill is a type of currency and it is commonly used as legal tender in many jurisdictions. Together with coins, banknotes make up the cash form of a currency. Banknotes were initially mostly paper, but Australia's Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation developed a polymer currency in the 1980s; it went into circulation on the nation's bicentenary in 1988.[11] Polymer banknotes had already been introduced in the Isle of Man in 1983. As of 2016, polymer currency is used in over 20 countries (over 40 if counting commemorative issues),[12] and dramatically increases the life span of banknotes and reduces counterfeiting.

The currency used is based on the concept of lex monetae; that a sovereign state decides which currency it shall use. The International Organization for Standardization has introduced a system of three-letter codes (ISO 4217) to denote currency (as opposed to simple names or currency signs), in order to remove the confusion arising because there are dozens of currencies called the dollar and several called the franc. Even the "pound" is used in nearly a dozen different countries; most of these are tied to the pound sterling, while the remainder has varying values. In general, the three-letter code uses the ISO 3166-1 country code for the first two letters and the first letter of the name of the currency (D for dollar, for example) as the third letter. United States currency, for instance, is globally referred to as USD. Currencies such as the pound sterling have different codes, as the first two letters denote not the exact country name but an alternative name also used to describe the country. The pound's code is GBP where GB denotes Great Britain instead of the United Kingdom.

Distinct from centrally controlled government-issued currencies, private decentralized trust-reduced networks support alternative currencies such as bitcoin and Ethereum's ether, which are classified as cryptocurrency since the transfer of value is assured through cryptographic signatures validated by all users. There are also branded currencies, for example 'obligation' based stores of value, such as quasi-regulated BarterCard, Loyalty Points (Credit Cards, Airlines) or Game-Credits (MMO games) that are based on reputation of commercial products, or highly regulated 'asset-backed' 'alternative currencies' such as mobile-money schemes like MPESA (called E-Money Issuance).[14]

Possession and sale of alternative forms of currencies is often outlawed by governments in order to preserve the legitimacy of the constitutional currency for the benefit of all citizens. For example, Article I, section 8, clause 5 of the United States Constitution delegates to Congress the power to coin money and to regulate the value thereof. This power was delegated to Congress in order to establish and preserve a uniform standard of value and to insure a singular monetary system for all purchases and debts in the United States, public and private. Along with the power to coin money, the United States Congress has the concurrent power to restrain the circulation of money which is not issued under its own authority in order to protect and preserve the constitutional currency. It is a violation of federal law for individuals, or organizations to create private coin or currency systems to compete with the official coinage and currency of the United States.[16] 041b061a72