Why are coins round and not square or cubes, etc.?
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Coins come in all sorts of shapes, including hexagons and octagons, some with holes in the middle, some made from two different shades of metal, etc. If you look them up, there have been coins in just about every sort of shape you can think of. These days, increasingly. A rounded edge is easiest when considering the use of vending machines, so there has been a trend in that direction.
Historically, coins have been minted in various shapes, geometric and otherwise.
In modern times, coins are round because they’re required to be able to roll. Think vending machines, coin counters, coin rolls, etc. It’s much simpler to count, store, and transport round coins.
A round shape gets wear on all sides, keeping a round shape even after circulation. Everything else degrades into a circle (or sphere, I guess) over time, as the corners stick out and get caught on stuff.
Holes in the middle used to be more common so they could be carried on strings, but that’s not been common for a while, hence the shape that holds across currencies by now
Coins are round because if you take a blob of metal and hit it with a hammer, you’ll end up with a relatively round shape, and then that key feature didn’t change a whole lot.
While vending machine theory sounds good ( and there were vending machins 2000 years ago). The real answer is following:
Round shape with little teath was best to reduce frauds. The most major was to grind some gold from side. If grinding was done uneven than shape was clearly not round. And it was quite hard to grind round coin evenly. Things become even more harder when theath was introduced around edge. The made distinguish between grinded and non grinded coins much easier.
Take ANY lump of metal and smash it between two flat surfaces. What does it look like? Pretty much round, huh?
Vending machines and coin sorting machines require coins to be able to roll. Plus, how would you like square things in your pocket? 😆
Tradition is very important in money. A big part of the value of money comes from the fact that it’s _perceived_ to have value, and a big part of that perception is “looking like” money.
Regardless of any other useful aspects of round currency, the _real_ reason it’s round is that previous coins were round, and people making new coins wanted them to match the old coins. Those coins were round because they matched older coins, going all the way back to the earliest coins that were created around the ancient Mediterranean (other parts of the world had other traditions).
So why round? The very first Lydian coins were made by placing blobs of electrum onto an anvil containing a pattern and whacking them with a hammer. This naturally produced a flattish, roundish shape with an embossed picture. That shape became traditional and was carried on and refined. All those other reasons to have coins were just later discoveries, the first reason is that’s just the shape you get when you stamp a blob of metal flat so you can stick an image on it.
Lots of Chinese coins were different shapes. The ones with holes in the centre were called “cash” and were strung together for ease of carrying when people didn’t normally have pockets, but carried their cash in their sleeves.
Plenty of Indian low denomination coins were square.
Take an oz of liquid gold and dump it on a flat surface and it globs into a circle. After that.additional manufacture steps were added over time. The cirvleb is a leftover from the original glob of hot metral process.
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