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What money is
Money is what people accept to settle a debt. It can be metal, paper, or a number in a bank. The form changes. The job does not.
Money is what a group of people will take to settle a debt.
That is the definition. Everything else is history, habit, or marketing.
The three jobs
A thing only works as money if it can do three jobs at once.
- Pay. You hand it over and the debt is finished.
- Count. “This car is 20,000 of these.”
- Hold. You can keep it overnight and it is still accepted tomorrow.
If it cannot do those jobs, it may still be valuable. It is a collectible, a souvenir, or a hope. It is not money.
Metal, paper, and numbers
For a long time, money was a weighed piece of metal. Then it was a paper claim on metal. Then it was paper backed by law and habit. Now most money is a number in a bank.
A coin in your pocket is still money. A dollar bill is money. A checking balance is money. They are different objects. They do the same job. What a banknote is. What a dollar is.
Gold and silver
Gold and silver were money because they were scarce, divisible, and hard to fake at scale. They are still used as a store of value. In a shop they are usually priced from spot, not from the number stamped on the coin, except when the coin is collected as a coin.
A Gold Eagle is money-metal in the shape of a coin. A 2019 nickel is money at five cents. Those are not the same kind of money. Face value. Legal tender.
What this site is for
These pages explain coins, paper, shops, and metal. They do not tell you what to buy. They tell you what the words mean and what happens at a counter. If you want the full set, start at the library.
More on the coin and money library.