bills of exchange

Morris "relied on public-spirited financiers like Salomon to subscribe to the bank, find purchasers for government bills of exchange, and lend their own money to the government," according to the National Park Service.

In the Middle Ages, metal coins were supplemented by bills of exchange to make long-term trade easier.

Ye Xiaofeng, founder of blockchain start-up ZerOne.IO, said he was talking to two of China's four biggest banks looking to use blockchain for monitoring bills of exchange and credit tracking.

An economy using bills of exchange was not a monetary economy, Graziani argued, but a credit economy:

An increasingly international network of financiers had created their own private money – of IOUs or bills of exchange – which allowed them to abandon sovereigns' money altogether.