Hi my name's Ben Alsop.
Welcome to my corner.
So today I want to talk to you about collecting the unofficial.
So, we are here in the Department of Coins and Medals
but that name is something of a misnomer
because we have over three-quarters of a million objects in this department
but they're not all just coins and medals.
A few years go we decided to collect more broadly
so we collect things to do with money
and if you go to the Money Gallery you'll see some of the things we have.
But what's interesting about this 4,000 years of history is that whilst currency
which is of course a representation of money
Money is an idea
it's a human construct.
These representations of money are normally given by an authority
be it a king, a queen, an emperor, a central bank
or suchlike.
But there are incidents in history where money's been created outside of these bounds of an authority
outside what you would expect to be the usual issuers of money.
Here in my hand I have a piece of paper.
Now this is a proclamation from 1670 to by Charles II
it's not the original proclamation
this is in Times New Roman
and he was more of a Comic Sans kind of guy.
This proclamation begins:
'Where as of late years several persons and corporations
upon pretence that there wanted small monies to be current
have presumed to cause certain pieces of brass, copper and other base metals
to be stamped with their private stamps
and then impose these pieces upon our poor.
Whereby our subjects have been greatly defrauded
and our royal authority and the laws of our kingdom violated.'
Now what is he talking about?
He's talking about these small brown and round tokens.
These tokens were created in the middle of the 17th century from about the 1640s to the 1670s.
Now, they don't look much.
You could easily walk past them when you see them in the gallery.
But they're fascinating insights into the 17th century
and they speak of a society that has a need for small change. So what does it do?
It creates its own.
It doesn't worry about central authorities.
It doesn't worry about diktats and proclamations.
Local shopkeepers actually issue their own money.
For instance on this image we have the rather fine image of a monkey smoking a pipe
but on the back it tells us where this image was created
and it was created in Southwark in London by a man called John Ewing
and what it is is a small token issued by a tradesman
issued by, in this case, a tobacconist.
We know this because of the token he created.
Now tobacco, as James I described it as 'that precious stink',
was a very important commodity in 17th century England
So this gives us an insight into what maybe a 17th century high street looked like.
In London there are over three and a half thousand separate issuers from about 1640 - 1670s
and they get issued throughout the country
and they can be pubs, inns, ale houses, stationers
oil men: so people gave you light
Cordwainers: people who made shoes
or all these things.
These are not the stories of kings and queens and emperors who normally adorn our currencies
they are the names and professions of ordinary people.
You and I.
Shopkeepers throughout the land
and their unofficial
and so that leads in 1670 with Charles II to trying to crush these practices
he says they have been imposed upon the poor
they haven't been imposed upon the poor
they are a necessity, people needed them
and eventually this becomes a problem throughout the history of precious-metal coinages
how do we supply enough?
and what do we do if there isn't enough?
and in the case of society in the UK in the 17th century people made their own.
So now I want to bring us into the contemporary world
and to try and make a link
now I'm not saying the link is definite
these objects these 17th
century tokens they try to fit in with an existing system they try to fit in
with the currency of the day but when we look at alternative unofficial
currencies today people will think of cryptocurrencies. Now I'm no expert on
cryptocurrencies, to be honest they scare me slightly, they're very
complicated in some respects but then what they're trying to do is quite
simple what they're trying to do is remove the central authority from money
so they're trying to be what there's known as a peer-to-peer cache where they
are actually not requiring any longer the central authority of a central bank
or a central banking institution and people can trade and
spend money themselves between one another without that element of
centralization now cryptocurrencies were first proposed in 2009 in a white paper
by the mystical mythical sects a Satoshi Nakamoto bitcoin's the most famous of
which but there are hundreds of these cryptocurrencies around.
You have peercoin litecoin etherium famously the doggie coin or dogecoin for
a while and there are many hundreds of these things but then how do you collect
cryptocurrency what do you do to collect these objects which have at their very
heart are not meant to be represented in a physical form that is not their point
Well we collect ephemera and things around it I suppose that's the best way
to do it really so here I have a bit of hardware which is an Ant Miner this is
used obviously to complete the complex computing problems that are required to
then obtain Bitcoin now this is a very small example you'd need many hundreds
of these doubtless a much better computing power than here this is a kind
of an entry level a trainer wheeler a Fisher Price bubble lawnmower if you
will of the Ant Miner world but it's important we collect something that at least
represents the hardware involved and then you have things like this which is
actually more of a commemorative thing for the commemorative market which is a
Bitcoin token created by a man called Mike Caldwell in 2011
Now what's being done here is to create a an actual object but to be honest
Bitcoin never needs to be represented isn't the whole point of it is it
doesn't take physical form in the same way of our currency doesn't today but
then that gets the heart of money money is an idea it is a human construct and
the things that we have on display in the money gallery are just
representations of money to a large extent. In this digital world in
which live this financially digital world where in the modern UK society 97
percent of money is created in the form of loans from
commercial banks doesn't take physical form what should we as a department be
collecting? This is where I need your help this is where the Museum needs your
help so make some suggestions So in three hundred years time someone can sit
here and say 'welcome to my corner' let's look at the financial world in the early 2000s.
Let us know what you think we as a department should be collecting to best
represent money today.
Thanks ever so much for watching my curators corner I hope
you enjoyed it there's a whole bunch of other great videos available on the
British Museum YouTube channel subscribe here for more great content
HA! Don't use that you b*****ds!
Also, where I'm from which is a small village on the Bedfordshire Hertfordshire
border called Shillington previously known as Shitlington they have tokens
issued oh sorry that is true as well.
but I didn't I just thought of throw it in right!
Proud of it. I'm a proud Shitter. I'm not going to say that...