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Amazingly the teeth of spinner dolphins have facilitated commerce in parts of the Solomon Islands for centuries and recently the value has risen from 4p to 18p as more people flock to it as a safe haven. Since 1977 the Solomon Island Dollar was the main currency but after a period of fin trading the Dolphin tooth has come back to the fore as a tradable currency….it is an interesting concept which comprises centuries of tradition with a modern desire for a safe haven and a connection to local tradition….money may run out but Dolphin teeth will always be there…that is unless man hunts the Dolphin to extinction…
Discuss on this on the Currency Exchange Forum
March 31, 2009 @ 9:55 pm
Are you sure we are talking about spinner dolphins and not “white sharks”? In any case, please keep me posted on the latest exchange rates against the EUR and USD…what next?
April 1, 2009 @ 8:38 am
Interesting article…
The other day I read something simmilar in the FT. There are still small Communities in the US were they use their own printed notes. Interest in local currencies often spikes during a recession as communities scramble to promote their businesses and curb unemployment
A good reference is the Lewis D. Solomon’s book “Rethinking our Centralized Monetary System: The Case for a System of Local Currencies.”
The U.S. Constitution prohibits states from coining their own currency, but it is silent on local paper money. The courts have allowed private groups to print complementary currency, provided it does not compete with federal money and does not circulate beyond a limited area… The freedom of economics at its best.
Regards
April 1, 2009 @ 9:00 am
Money is anything that is commonly accepted by a group of people for the exchange of goods, services, or resources. Every country has its own system of coins and paper money.
Bartering and Commodity Money
In the beginning, people bartered. Barter is the exchange of a good or service for another good or service, a bag of rice for a bag of beans. However, what if you couldn’t agree what something was worth in exchange or you didn’t want what the other person had. To solve that problem humans developed what is called commodity money.
A commodity is a basic item used by almost everyone. In the past, salt, tea, tobacco, cattle and seeds were commodities and therefore were once used as money. However, using commodities as money had other problems. Carrying bags of salt and other commodities was hard, and commodities were difficult to store or were perishable.
Coins and Paper Money
Metals objects were introduced as money around 5000 B.C. By 700 BC, the Lydians became the first in the Western world to make coins. Countries were soon minting their own series of coins with specific values. Metal was used because it was readily available, easy to work with and could be recycled. Since coins were given a certain value, it became easier to compare the cost of items people wanted.
Some of the earliest known paper money dates back to China, where the issue of paper money became common from about AD 960 onwards.
Representative Money
With the introduction of paper currency and non-precious coinage, commodity money evolved into representative money. This meant that what money itself was made of no longer had to be very valuable.
Representative money was backed by a government or bank’s promise to exchange it for a certain amount of silver or gold. For example, the old British Pound bill or Pound Sterling was once guaranteed to be redeemable for a pound of sterling silver.
Source: http://inventors.about.com/od/mstartinventions/a/money.htm (visit the link to read more about the history of money)
For most of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the majority of currencies were based on representative money through the use of the gold standard.