Welsh mining towns had alternative currencies 200 years ago – here’s what the crypto world could learn from them
theconversation.comYou can also read this article in Welsh. The global cryptocurrency market has seen a number of recent setbacks: from the collapse of the Terra/Luna system in May 2022 to the failure of FTX, one of the largest crypto exchanges in the world.
Because of these factors, and other concerns over cryptocurrencies’ carbon emissions, these assets lost US$2 trillion in value (£1.5 trillion) in 2022.
But while cryptocurrencies get a lot of attention today, in some ways they are not a revolutionary concept. Hundreds of years ago, workers in Wales were often paid with alternative currencies instead of money.
These currencies were physical tokens that represented and were linked to the value of real money. Many cryptocurrencies work in a similar way, acting as digital tokens that represent a ledger of financial assets (this is known as “tokenisation”).
