An understanding of what foreign exchange trading is begins with knowledge of what money really is. Before money, people bartered and traded goods for goods; this was very inefficient. Perhaps, someone wanted a horse, but only had grain to trade and the owner of the horse had no need of the grain. There was no way to make the deal. The creation of money as a medium of exchange and a store of value overcame this problem.

Gold and Silver Coins, The Gold Standard for Paper Money

As traders of goods and services became willing to accept money as payment, trade could take place between parties that did not have products desired by each other. Early on, gold coins were popular as money as there was an inherent value to the gold. Paper money eventually replaced gold as between traders with a legal guarantee that the paper could be exchange for gold from the government that issued the paper. This was known as the gold standard. Governments defined by law what was known as "legal tender" for the settlement of debts.

As countries began to trade with each other, it became important to international sellers of goods and services to be able to value the money issued by different governments. As long as each country primarily issued coins of precious metals or guaranteed payment of a fixed amount of gold for paper currency, this was not a difficult problem. Absent a uniform precious metal standard, another method was necessary.

• Currency Market Trading Hours

• Currency Convertor

  The Go Currency Converter has been the default exchange rate feed for 100's of sites on the web for the last 10 years. We've powered the currency calculator for large ...

• Euro Conversion Currency Rate

• Us Currency Exchanger

  Currency Converter from Yahoo! Finance. Find the latest currency exchange rates and convert all major world currencies with our currency converter.

• Us Gbp Currency

  GBP USD - Currency Exchange From British Pound To US Dollar With GBP USD Rate, GBP USD Converter, GBP USD Chart And GBP USD History.