William Jennings Bryan was a liberal Democrat, a prohibitionist Presbyterian preacher, and an advocate of a silver-based currency.
As a result few gold coins were actually minted and the vast majority of US currency was silver.
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From 1861 until 1873 neither gold nor silver were used as currency and all US currency was paper which could not be exchanged for either.
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In that year, the U.S. was busy trying to convince the public that it was going to dilute the gold standard with silver convertibility if not greenback currency, while suggesting it might also impose an income tax.
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The biggest fuel of global trade was American silver, the first truly global currency.
It is empirically well established that devaluing your currency is not always the silver bullet it is made out to be in the press.
E-gold is a privately issued digital currency backed by real gold and silver stored in banks in Europe and Dubai.
The fact is that the dollar, unlike the gold and silver of old, is a depreciating resource, a fiat currency.
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Paper currency began as warehouse receipts for specified weights of gold or silver.
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The silver lining here is that just as dollar weakness tends to coincide with worldwide currency weakness, dollar strength frequently occurs in concert with the reflation of foreign currencies.
Now with gold over valued, silver coins disappeared from circulation and gold coins (and paper money) dominated the currency.
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This would be a global currency explicitly backed by a basket of a dozen or so precious commodities, such as gold, silver, oil, etc.
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