Re:Inside the Bitcoin advocates’ closed-door meeting with fe...
by ferdo on Thursday September 05, 2013 @11:19AM
(#6334697)
> It's not clear that commodity money or coinage existed before paper notes.
Coins were around for millenia before paper money. The earliest paper money I know of is the bark money written of by Marco Polo [1]. Europeans got their idea for paper money from the Chinese.
[1] http://www.fee.org/the_freeman/detail/marco-polo-on-money
The origins of modern bank notes probably have more to do with the Knights Templar than goldsmiths.
The point you were trying to make is accurate enough, but the source you're quoting is both lengthy and simplistic past the point of being correct.