A system of comparable security for goods to the value of, relies on goods being valued at the right level. At the moment, there are too many pretend paper notes in circulation, compared to the gross international product in terms of food the only real limiting currency - linked to population, where minerals are not so much produce, but a fixed asset that can never grow to get any bigger, or with proper recycling, ever diminish, whereas crops and farm or fished animals will reach a practical limit, before desertification and acid oceans completely destroy that ability of the planet to support life.

The United States adopted a silver standard based on the Spanish milled dollar in 1785.

From 1750 to 1870, wars within Europe as well as an ongoing trade deficit with China (which sold to Europe but had little use for European goods) drained silver from the economies of Western Europe and the United States. Coins were struck in smaller and smaller numbers, and there was a proliferation of bank and stock notes used as money.

In the 1790s, the United Kingdom suffered a silver shortage. It ceased to mint larger silver coins and instead issued "token" silver coins and overstruck foreign coins. With the end of the Napoleonic Wars, the Bank of England began the massive recoinage programme that created standard gold sovereigns, circulating crowns, half-crowns and eventually copper farthings in 1821. The recoinage of silver after a long drought produced a burst of coins. The United Kingdom struck nearly 40 million shillings between 1816 and 1820, 17 million half crowns and 1.3 million silver crowns.

Gold and silver standards were interlinked.

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