Long before banks had apps, ads, or annoying queue systems, there was barter. You had goats. Your neighbor had grain. A quick exchange and voilà—both parties walked away satisfied. Unless, of course, your goat ate the grain during negotiations.

It worked, kind of. Until people realized:

• Goats don’t have change.

• Grain goes bad.

• And how many chickens equal a cow, really?

We needed a medium of exchange, and that’s when the real party started.

Around 600 BC, King Alyattes of Lydia (modern-day Turkey) minted the first official currency: electrum coins—a fancy natural mix of gold and silver.

Suddenly:

• You could make it rain in the marketplace.

• You didn’t need to carry livestock everywhere.

• Theft became a real profession.

Banks started as temples where priests moonlighted as moneylenders. Divine interest rates included lightning bolts if you defaulted.

Fast forward to Medieval Italy—specifically Florence and Venice. Families like the Medici started what we now call modern banking:

• Taking deposits

• Giving out loans

• Making rich people richer (a tradition banks proudly continue today), Hehe he, I have apologized

In fact, “bank” comes from the Italian word “banca”—a bench moneylenders sat on. If a banker went broke, the bench was literally broken: banca rotta (yep, that’s where we get “bankrupt”).

The Chinese Tang Dynasty (7th century) got tired of lugging coins and invented paper money. Europe caught on by the 17th century.

Enter the Bank of England in 1694:

• Printed official notes.

• Financed wars (yep).

• Invented the phrase: “In debt we trust.”

Paper money was basically an IOU backed by gold—until governments decided, “You know what? Let’s just say it has value.”

By the late 20th century, banks upgraded:

• Plastic cards (swipe, insert, tap… still no money)

• Electronic transfers (the modern IOU)

• ATMs (the only robots people trusted… for a while)

Digital banking was born. But with it came banking fees, errors, and hold music that could drive anyone to madness.

And somewhere in the corner of the internet…

Enter 2008. The world economy had a meltdown (thanks, banks).

Then, a mysterious figure—Satoshi Nakamoto—dropped a whitepaper titled:

"Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System"

Translation: "What if we made money... but without banks?"

Bitcoin offered:

• No intermediaries

• Limited supply (only 21 million)

• Transactions you couldn’t reverse (or explain to your grandma)

Blockchain became the buzzword. Governments freaked out. Early adopters became millionaires. And scammers saw a new playground.

Now we have:

• Banking apps with 12-factor logins

• DeFi (Decentralized Finance) making bankers sweat

• Stablecoins like USDT and USDC

• Memecoins like Doge, which started as a joke and became… a joke with a market cap

• Money evolved from goats to gold to Google Pay.

• Banks went from temples to TikTok ads.

• Bitcoin wasn't a trend—it was a revolution.

• And history repeats itself: even Bitcoin now has centralized exchanges.

Banking has always been about trust—from trusting the village barter system, to trusting central banks, to now trusting code (or Elon Musk tweets).

Whether you’re old school with cash, ride-or-die for crypto, or just Mpesa-ing your roommate rent… money isn’t what it used to be—and never will be again.