The currency in the United States is the dollar. You probably already knew that.

It also happens to be the name of the currency in over 20 other countries, including Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and Singapore.

What is a dollar exactly and why is that the name of the currency in these countries?

Learn more about the history of the dollar on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. This episode is brought to you by Curiosity Stream.

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The rise of money as a fungible means of

exchange for goods and services was inexorably tied to the use of precious metals such as silver and

gold. These metals had properties which lent themselves to use as a currency, primarily

that they were scarce, easy to divide, and were elements.

You could melt silver, for example, to create smaller pieces, or melt them together to make

larger ones.

Even though these metals were great as stores of wealth and units of exchange, they weren't always the same. You could blend

less expensive metals to create a coin which looked like a normal coin, but had less of the precious metal

in it. Likewise, you could shave down a coin to make it slightly smaller and take the shavings to make a brand new coin.

Hence, quality coins which had a guaranteed size and purity were more valued than other coins.

With that, we now turn to the Kingdom of Bohemia in the year 1520

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