I just saw a photo of old coins from like 1 or 2000 years ago and they are all round.
Why is it that they all use coins and not squares or something else completely?
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There is a wikipedia page for this! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coinage_shapes
Short answer: it was not always a circle, for example “Many countries have struck square coins with rounded corners. Some of these, such as the Netherlands zinc 5 cent coin of World War II (1941–1943)[4] and the Bangladesh 5 poisha coin (1977–1994)[5] ”
If you look further in the past, you can see that it was not that round at first: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coin. But it’s an easy shape to obtain when you either drop some melted metal on a surface, or hit with a hammer on a ductile metal.
That said, Mauryan Empire coins, 3rd century BC, were square coins as well as Bilingual coin of Agathocles of Bactria with Hindu deities, c. 180 BC
Also, rectangular bar of metal that you can cut in was precursor of coins. But it’s nor really “a coin” I would say.
take a lump of metal and hit it with a hammer and you get a round coin shape, and it doesn’t have sharp corners that would ruin pockets or a pouch
There were definitely other currencies (the first that comes to mind – [Lithuanian long currency](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithuanian_long_currency) made of silver)
But coins won because they were durable, easy to carry and civilisations that were wealthier, traded a lot, sort of spread them
Fun fact, that coins and bank notes (cash) only make up a small fraction of the total amount of ‘money’ in the world. About 90% of all money only exists on electronic accounts.
Another explanation is that metals are rare and difficult to work with, at least for individuals. The scarcity gives metal inherent value (the value of a gold or silver coin is often the value of the metal itself), and stamping coins is an expensive process, making it hard to profit from forgery.
Some rocks and gems have these properties, but they’re not as good as a currency because they’re harder to shape reliably, shatter, and can’t be melted back to their raw materials.
Metal coins are almost unparalleled for their task: Small objects that represent an easily identifiable discrete amount of “value”, are durable, and are difficult to forge.
Modern bank notes also have these properties, but only because technology has progressed to the point where we can make durable paper that contains difficult to reproduce marks like watermarks, holograms, and all of the other oddities that you can find on a bank note.
A round shape is easy to make, replicate, and deal with. Something others here haven’t gotten into is the divicibility. A big thing with currency is the ability to divide it. Having a round shaped coin makes it very easy.
Half a coin cut it in two,
A quarter cut the half coin in two
A piece of eight cut the quarter in half
Using square coin would make this process more complicated, and make it easier for people to scam you.
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