Questions, answered briefly

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Less than textbooks suggest. Anthropologists have found few societies based mainly on barter. Within communities, credit and informal obligations were more common, and early records from Mesopotamia show accounts kept in units of barley and silver.

The earliest known stamped coins come from Lydia, in western Anatolia, in the late seventh or early sixth century BCE. They were made of electrum, a natural alloy of gold and silver. Coinage developed separately in China.

It was suspended in the First World War, restored in a weaker form in the 1920s and broke down during the Great Depression, when keeping gold convertibility meant deep cuts in money and credit. Britain left in 1931. A gold link survived for the dollar under Bretton Woods until 1971.

Fiat money is money that is legal tender because the state says so, and that cannot be exchanged for a fixed amount of gold or any other commodity. Its value rests on trust in institutions and on how much of it exists relative to the economy.

Not at present. The Bank of England and HM Treasury have consulted on and researched a possible digital pound. They have said that any decision to introduce one would come later and would require legislation.

A currency that central banks and governments hold in large amounts to pay for imports, service debts and manage their own exchange rates. Sterling played this role in the 19th century; the US dollar has been the largest reserve currency since the mid 20th century.

On 16 September 1992 the UK left the European Exchange Rate Mechanism after it could no longer keep sterling within its agreed band. Shortly afterwards the UK adopted an inflation target, which remains the basis of its monetary policy.

No. We describe what has happened and why historians think it happened. We never forecast exchange rates, and past events are not a reliable guide to future movements.