![]() That triggered withdrawal demands for other banks which stalled the monetary system as a whole. Such a bank would be doomed to fail because no bank could satisfy a massive demand for withdrawal. Under such a system, once a bank got into financial trouble, many people demanded withdrawal of deposits at once. In the middle of the nineteenth century, there were times when state governments, cities, commercial banks, and various companies issued dollar bills that were convertible for gold and government bonds. This conversion rate was kept until 1933. Then, in 1900, the Gold Standard Act was passed that set gold as the only standard for redeeming paper money. Subsequently, the amount of gold was reduced to 15.05 grams under the Coinage Act of 1837 (1 troy ounce of gold = $20.67). Immediately after independence, under the 1792 Coinage Act, the $10 coin was legally defined to contain 16.04 grams of pure gold (in other words, 1 troy ounce of gold = $19.319). Until the mid-1930s, in the United States, the government guaranteed the conversion of dollar bills for gold, which is called the convertible currency system. To understand how the two types of money have developed, it is useful to look into the history of American money. The first subperiod was that in which paper money was convertible into gold whereas the second period is that of nonconvertible money. The era of paper money can be divided into two subperiods. The modern economy is built on paper money. Subsequently, many local governments printed paper money that promised payback in gold and silver coins. The first paper money was printed in 1610, which promised payback in silver coins. During the Tokugawa era, various coins were cast and circulated widely. Footnote 4 Soon after his death, Iyeyasu Tokugawa (1543–1616) took power in 1600 and cast new gold coins called Keicho Oban and Koban. Hideyoshi Toyotomi cast the famous first Japanese gold coin, called Tensho Oban, in 1588. It is known that in the fifteenth century, copper coins circulated rather widely tolls for bridges and fees for inns were paid in copper coins. A main target of trade was Chinese copper coins. Kiyomori Taira (1118–1181) and Yoshimitsu Ashikaga (1358–1408) led trade with the Song Dynasty (960–1279) and the Ming Dynasty (1368–1644), respectively. Footnote 2 Instead, Chinese copper coins were imported from China between the middle of the twelfth century through to the fifteenth century. This is partly because most Japanese copper was not suitable for coins because it contained too much sulfur. ![]() Footnote 1 After that, however, government-made money was not cast again until the era of Toyotomi Hideyoshi (1537–1598) who, in the 1580s, united Japan after a century-long period of war. In Japan, twelve kinds of copper coins (called the imperial coins) were cast over the period between 708 AD and 963 AD. For this purpose, it is useful to start with the history of Japanese money. To understand the innovations that virtual currencies have brought, and are expected to bring to our society, it is desirable to study various types of currencies that were used in the past and that are used currently, and compare them with virtual currencies. ![]()
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