Money as we know it today is a symbol of value created by the human imagination with no intrinsic value of its own. A coin or paper currency note has value because people accept it as a symbolic medium of exchange. The economic value of money as measured by its purchasing power is a subject of economic theory. But economics does not explain how individual human beings and societies came to accept symbolic money as a medium of exchange or store of value. The process of according value to a symbol is psychological and social. Money is a social institution based on the consent of the population and a psychological symbol based on the consent of the individual. Money has acquired the all-pervasive value that it possesses today by a slow evolutionary process that can be most easily understood b