Gears, Gold, and Global Peace: A Steampunk Bitcoin Journey Through an Alternate 20th Century

History Unplugged Podcast · Jan 20, 2026 · 1h 5m

We have paper money today because it functioned as an IOU, certifying that the holder could redeem it for an equivalent amount of physical gold or silver from the bank's vault. That’s where the English pound got its name as it matched a specific weight of gold (or silver). This was the gold standard, and this is how banks operated for centuries. But it was largely abandoned after World War I, when governments prevented the withdrawal of gold by suspending the convertibility of their paper money into gold to conserve national gold reserves for purchasing vital war supplies and to allow…