Several millennia before the birth of Christ, people learned to extract raw materials and use precious and colored metals such as gold, silver, copper, and tin. The advantage of metals was that they could be easily divided into parts and then remelted. Metals were resistant to fire and did not deteriorate during storage. With the spread of copper and bronze mining and smelting, and later gold and silver, metal ingots or items of a certain weight began to serve as equivalents in the exchange of goods and services.

The first mention of monetary transactions in the Bible is found in Genesis 23:16. This passage describes how Abraham purchases the field and cave of Machpelah from Ephron the Hittite to bury his wife, Sarah.

Here is how it is presented:

"And Abraham listened to Ephron, and Abraham weighed out to Ephron the silver which he had named in the hearing of the sons of Heth: four hundred shekels of silver, currency of the merchants" (Genesis 23:16).

This passage highlights the use of silver as a means of payment, which was common in ancient times. It also mentions a unit of weight—the shekel, which served as a standard for determining value.

This episode serves as an important testimony to economic relationships and legal agreements in biblical times.

In the 20th century AD, technologies for extracting rare earth metals became widely used, finding applications in the electronics industry.

Today, tokens of various blockchains can be classified as prototypes of precious, non-ferrous, ferrous, and rare earth metals in digital form. Their diversity and value are now determined by factors such as popularity, supply and demand, and the complexity of issuance (mining). Thus, the current generation witnesses the emergence of a new type of circulating currency (tokens), whose value is as volatile and unpredictable as the value of different types of metals, depending on industrial or investment demand.

Oleksandr Overchuk,
Blockchain researcher

Other publications by the author are available HERE