Have you every heard about the Spanish dollar?

The “real de a ocho,” or the piece of eight (Spanish peso de ocho), was a silver coin, worth eight reales, that was minted in the Spanish Empire after 1598. It was conceived to correspond in value to the German thaler. The Spanish dollar was widely used by many countries as international currency because of its uniformity in standard and milling characteristics. As you know, the Spanish dollar was the coin upon which the original US dollar was based, and it remained legal tender in the United States until the Coinage Act of 1857. It was also the origin of the “peso” currencies in use in many countries, as well as the Chinese yuan. Because it was widely used in Europe, the Americas, and the Far East, it became the first world currency. In short, the first modern hegemony, the Genoan/Iberian regime, involved a continuation of medieval money and banking in the service of the new Iberian empires. It was all about the importation of gold and silver from the New World. Spanish and Portuguese banking was primitive, but as described above their coin was good. This formed the basis of a symbiotic relationship with the Most Serene Republic of Genoa, the small city-state that became the financial partner with the Iberian powers, in their period of hegemony in the sixteenth century.