Ay? You ask me why I asked your father for this gold coin?

In fact, the reason is very simple, I understand the knowledge of human beings as an individual, but I do not understand the knowledge related to human beings as a whole. And this gold coin was the beginning of my real understanding of how human society works.

The creator of this coin, Anastasia I, can be said to be a genius and wise man, he was one of the few people of his time who truly understood the value of money, and this gold coin is his greatest contribution. He discovered the meaning of money, and it was from this coin that Justinian's Golden Age began, and from which the monetary system that sustains human society today has benefited greatly.

Well, it doesn't matter if you don't understand, it doesn't matter anyway. Let's start at the beginning.

As you know, the act of trade has a special meaning for human beings. In academia, there is even a view of the emergence of trade as a demarcation point for human existence.

Maybe that's true. It is not known that the knowledge of trade is probably a sign that mankind has begun to have wisdom. In short, trade plays an important role in human civilization.

If you look at ancient mythology, you can easily find angels or gods to stay in the house, so that the owner can make a profit. One of the most important titles of Zeus, the main god in Greek mythology, was the patron god of the guests. There is also a content in the guest house that the host not only does not harm the guest, but even provides protection for the guest. They all come from trade.

There was trade before the caravanserais. At that time, the only way to ensure the passage of trade was to stay in people's homes as guests, which is where the myths come from—to put it bluntly, angels and anything else were not sacred at all.

Ahh Byzantine monetary policy is not involved, only the material of the currency itself.

An indispensable part of trade is the currency that acts as a "ruler" to measure the value of goods. What exactly is currency? If you start with gold, an ancient natural currency, you will find a very interesting thing. That is, the metal born in supernovae does not seem to be of much use to humans.

Not because of its scarcity. Yes, scarce materials can have a higher unit price on some level, but this has nothing to do with becoming currency. Gemstones, which are rarer than gold, have never been currency.

In fact, these are more than three problems, let's explain them one by one.

What was the reason for gold to become an ancient currency? Because among the materials common in ancient times, its chemical properties were the most stable.

It's like a weapon. The most important thing in judging a weapon is not how advanced it is or how lethal it is, but whether it is reliable enough. The same is true of currency, where the reliability of the material had to be a priority. For that reason alone, gold does have its natural advantages.

Iron inevitably oxidizes, and gemstones are too brittle to chip. Materials that meet the overall condition of not being easily changed are not so easy to find are not so easy to find. This is a prerequisite for becoming the universal currency of antiquity – the material itself is not easy to change, and its value is not easy to change.

This thought lasted for a long time, until two events shattered this notion.

The first event is a rather famous legend. The original story is more complicated, and we will exclude irrelevant details to get to the heart of it, which is about a merchant who is asked whether the Persian emperor or the Roman emperor is greater.

As you can imagine, this is an extremely insidious question. The alert businessman answered the question with a gesture - he asked the questioner to open his palm and place a Byzantine gold coin and two Persian silver coins into the palm of the questioner's hand.

Needless to say, it was a bribe, but it was also a very cunning and clever answer. There is no doubt that gold coins are worth more than silver coins, yet there are more silver coins than gold coins. This is the cunning side of the businessman.

In the same way, if the questioner chooses one of the two, it means that the questioner himself has answered the question of which was greater, the Roman emperor or the Persian emperor. And if you include both together, it means that the questioner thinks that both are equally great. This is the smart side of businessmen.

I'm not interested in going into the merchant's answer, I just want to decipher something from the two currencies mentioned in this story.

As I said, Byzantine gold coins were the common currency and carryover currency of the Middle Ages. But what I didn't say was that Byzantine gold wasn't the most widely circulated currency in the Middle Ages – you guessed it. The most widely used currency in circulation in the Middle Ages was none other than the Persian silver coin in the story.

Now, let me ask a question. If the Persian silver coin had such a large circulation, why didn't it replace the Byzantine gold coin as the carryover currency of the Middle Ages? Taking it a step further, why didn't Persia use gold coins to replace Byzantine gold coins? You know, Persia had a tradition of using gold as currency, even before Byzantium.

This first story declares that money is not equal to money, and even if they are minted from the same material and everything is exactly the same, they often do not have the same value.

The second story is a real historical event, which is a breakthrough in the value of metal money itself. Its founders were a group of "poor knights".

To be honest, the name doesn't live up to its name at all. Far from being poor, these knights were probably even the richest of their time. The full name of this group was "The Poor Knights of Christ and Solomon's Temple." They are best known as the "Knights Templar".

Through lending, the Knights Templar amassed a wealth that rivaled the wealth, and they were even the largest creditor of the King of France, which many scholars believe was the real reason for their demise.

Oh, don't ask your father about it, or he'll probably be able to talk for a whole day. I'm not as good as your father, so I'll just make one point.

When a money lending business takes place, it is inevitable that a concept will arise at the same time. The Knights Templar developed this concept by issuing a special bill with which the equivalent amount of money could be claimed in the Templar branches throughout the Order. You guessed it, the Knights Templar developed the concept of "banking", the precursor to modern banking.

The most important derivative of the Knights Templar's policy was born in circulation. As you might imagine, because of this property, the bills issued by the Knights Templar could be circulated as if they were real money, even though they were ordinary paper, and undoubtedly did not meet the condition that the material itself was not easily changed, which was once a currency in circulation.

These two events shatter the established concept of money and raise a new question: what exactly is the value of money.

If you really think about it, to this day, almost all currencies are useless in their own right. Paper is useless, but gold is not a useful thing. But it is this useless thing that has become an indispensable part of human society. To put it another way, does it only need to be something that is represented—rather than something that is not invariant in itself—that has the conditions to become money? That's right.

The real value of money is because it contains information - information about the value of goods, information about the credit of the country, information about the national strength of the country, and so on. It is not the currency itself that is meaningful, but the information that the currency represents. It is not the currencies themselves that act as equivalents in trade, but the information that these currencies represent. When we trade with money, what we exchange is not the currency itself, but the "information" that the currency represents.

So when the East and West collapsed the Byzantine gold coin system during the reign of Andronica II, the history of the Eastern Roman Empire also foolishly came to an end (Note 1).

In contrast, the Holy See continued to use the concept created by the Knights Templar, whom they had exterminated. Vatican bonds, especially bearer bonds, have so far had a status similar to that of currency in circulation. At least a considerable part of the status of the Holy See today comes from this.

Another interesting fact is that the color of the Knights Templar's costume is reversed, which is the composition of the Swiss flag. Switzerland has long been considered one of the most important fugitive nations for the remnants of the Knights Templar, and Switzerland is precisely the land of banks, and the Swiss Guard is the exclusive guard of the Pope even today. In honor of Switzerland, the flag was flipped over once again, and the Red Cross, a multinational organization that reinstated the Knights Templar's attire, was the original idea of the Templar Order. In the face of these facts, was it the Holy See or the Knights Templar who really won the final victory? Well, that's another topic.

_

"The mochi is falling."

Mrs. Kaihara paused for a moment and pointed to her daughter's finger.

Indeed, the mochi snack that had been held in my hand since just now had been pulled up to the point where it was about to fall because so much time had passed. Dome pulled it up with both hands in a panic and quickly put it in his mouth. Because she was in too much hurry and unprepared, she accidentally choked, and Mitsuki Haihara, who was sitting next to her, hurriedly handed over the tea.

They sat at a table of four, with Mrs. Kaihara sitting on one side and the Kaihara siblings on the other. Mother and child were face-to-face, so Mrs. Kaihara could clearly see the interaction between the two siblings, and she even smiled meaningfully.

"Does it make sense for you to say that?"

Before Dome could breathe his breath, Mitsuki Umihara asked his mother.

"Well, the reason is simple. Money is something that comes to the world for the sole purpose of representing a message. However, it is also undeniable that money itself is just an external symbol. Money, like words, is 'only an approximation of the real, not the real itself' (Note 2). When we use their value, we want to make the information they represent essentially equivalent. This equivalence must be universal, not transferred by geographical location, and this is where the carryover currency comes from. Speaking of which, can you understand what I mean, can you understand what I'm talking about? Expensive. ”

Mrs. Kaihara picked up the Byzantine gold coin, sandwiched it horizontally between her index and middle fingers, and opened her palm towards the Kaihara siblings.

"I mean, for all the capable people in the school city, if you compare them to the pound sterling, to the dinar, to all kinds of currencies. Then, maybe this Byzantine gold coin is the note issued by the Knights Templar. ”

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Note 1: By the way, it is said that in evaluating the most stupid decision in human history, Russia was elected by a large number of votes. But what I would say is that if we stretch history out for a millennium, one decision would probably be elected with a higher number of votes. The decision was to weaken the Eastern Roman Empire. It is no exaggeration to say that the existence of the Eastern Roman Empire, as a protective wall of Christendom, not only created a barrier between ****** and Catholicism, but also built an economic route for the Byzantine monetary system. When neither exists, it is a conviction that the conflict between Christendom and ****** goes beyond the confines of the battlefield.

Note 2: The copyright of this sentence belongs to Plato, and the original words are words.