“Mind Your Business” was stamped on the first US-issued dollars. Long way from the surveillance financial system of today!


By the time of the Declaration of Independence, federally issued money (Continental Dollars) had already been circulating for a year.
Continentals, denominated in Spanish dollars rather than British pounds, were in theory backed by future tax revenues from the colonies in a quota system. In practice, those revenues didn’t materialize in the size needed to soak up emissions of Continentals, which accounted for about 80% of the fledgling USA’s federal income.
As expected, they quickly devalued as printing escalated, counterfeiting by Loyalists tried to damage the currency, and colonies issued their own paper money to fund their own war expenses.
The denominations were mostly foreign to us today - the first run was for $30 notes. Later runs included $3 (forgotten by the time the phrase “queer as a $3 bill” emerged in the mid-to-late 1800s), $4, $6, $7, $8 denominations along with the familiar $1, $2, $5, and $10 denominations today.
There was also a coin version, which featured “Mind Your Business” on it - the opposite of how most governments view money today.
Minted in tin and brass, it was also easy prey for counterfeiting, since the face value was high above the cost of materials. The contract to mint them was also won by a hefty bribe.
People had more pressing things to record at the time, but I’m not aware of any serious mechanism to help the Continental trade at par. It wasn’t even legal tender for paying taxes, and was essentially a haphazard zero-coupon bond that would eventually be redeemed for gold and silver.
In reality, Continentals were redeemed for 1¢ on the dollar in the 1790s. Oh, and that was for new federal bonds, not even cash.
The cheapest Continental coins from 1776 fetch about $10k today - a bit less than 4% annualized return over the last 250 years. A few rare specimens go above $1m though.
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