Stories about value
Money appears stable because we use the same words every day: peso, euro, yen, dollar. Monetary units still change. Some are created to unify fragmented systems. Others replace weakened currencies. Some remove zeros, and others disappear entirely.
This section explains how those changes happened.
It is not a complete history of the world economy. It is a collection of stories that helps explain Cartonindex figures. It shows why one unit can express enormous amounts. It also shows how a common currency begins and what happens when trust in money breaks down.
How money changed
The first articles explain transformations that affected many currencies:
- How banknotes began.
- From the gold standard to fiat money.
- Bretton Woods and the end of dollar-gold convertibility.
- Why currencies remove zeros.
These pages show that money does not need to keep the same physical form or remain linked to a metal. It needs a recognizable unit, a working payment system, and enough trust to be accepted.
Currencies that changed scale or system
Cartonindex includes several currencies whose histories help explain nominal figures:
- Argentina and thirteen removed zeros.
- Venezuela and fourteen removed zeros.
- Chile: from the peso to the escudo and back.
- The birth of the modern yen.
- Colombia: from many banknotes to one issuing bank.
- How the euro was created.
These stories do not rank currencies from best to worst. They explain why current units have different sizes, names, and institutions.
When money stops working as a reference
Hyperinflation is not simply high inflation. Prices change so quickly that money loses usefulness as a unit of account, medium of exchange, and store of value.
The collection includes three cases:
- Germany, 1923: when the mark stopped measuring.
- Hungary, 1946: the fastest recorded inflation.
- Zimbabwe and the one-hundred-trillion-dollar note.
It also explains a different regime change: Ecuador's dollarization in 2000.