Currency exchange history

As you all know Eurochange is a leader in the currency exchange market. And we tell you about many things in this blog week after week, but this week we decided to give you a history lesson, more precisely the currencies exchange history.

USA

The United
States of America is not one of the oldest countries in the world, but it has been
a key component is the currency exchange. Most of the important events that changed
the currency exchange history will take place in the US. Let´s see those moments so important for the currency exchange history.

The trade goes back as back as history does, it was the way of living. But it was not until medieval times that banks were born. But even banks existed there was not a way to trade currencies because it was not a standard.

Gold Standard

The gold standard will be what we know today as the rate. Each currency value was directly related to the price of gold. This way the weight of gold you could buy with your currency will be as much as you could sell that gold and get paid in another currency. Simple, neat, easy, clean…. Wrong.

World War I

When the World War I started, in order to be able to be able to afford the military projects, most world powers printed more money. By doing so, the value of the gold was no longer a good standard, it´s prize was too volatile depending on the country or the currency. The gold standard returned between wars, but it was finally gone by 1939.

1944

22 of July 1944, Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, USA. A hot summer day when the allied members decided that the US dollar will replace gold as the standard for currency exchange. But it had a twist, the US dollar was worth the equivalent in gold. All was good will 1971 when Richard Nixon stopped the gold sales since the US was no longer able to back up all the gold from the central banks around the world.

1971

This time the “meeting” took place at an iconic place, the Smithsonian. A new treaty was made based on the one from Bretton Woods. The decision was to link the prize of gold officially to the dollar at 38$ per ounce. The idea was great, this way all the currencies will have their own rate with the dollar and the dollar with the gold. Wrong again! The value of the US dollar collapsed in a few months, but from this wrong, a lesson was learned, and then…

1985

Back to a luxurious place, the Plaza Hotel in New York where Japan, the German Federal Republic, France, and the United Kingdom took a drastic decision: Devaluate the US dollar. Who would think that making money worth less was the answer? Well, they did, and they were right. On September 22^nd by doing so the United States fixed their deficit and helped coming back from the 80´s recession. This helped international commerce and the result was a bigger level of currency exchanges.

Today

From that point on is easy to know what happened: technology. With the improvements of technology every day the information flows much faster and easy to receive and understand. The globalization made possible that each currency has a value in another currency, and we do not need to evaluate if that comes from the dollar, or gold, or anything else. Also, that’s our job. At Eurochange we take all those factors and many more into account to offer you amazing rates to exchange your currencies. Why calculate 3 times if you can just see how much your money is worth in another currency just by clicking (the word clicking its actually clickable and you will be able to calculate any currency exchange with the euro)

We hope you enjoyed this quick history lesson but don’t think about it to exchange your currencies into euros or vice versa, as we said that´s what we are here for, so visit us, call us or contact us, and we will provide you with the best customer service out there.

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Currency exchange history

USA