Overview
When most of us hear about currency we think money, because we wrongfully associate currency with money. However, these 2 notions are quite different. Currencies are elements used in an exchange system to obtain something else. They are a system to transfer value from one place to another. The people of Yap (an island in Micronesia) use as currency ‘rai stones’ which are basically large circular stones. That can weight up to 4 tonnes. That’s their currency which they use in exchanges and they don’t even move the stones from one owner to the other.
While you might say, well, they are so ignorant, think about the $10 bill you have in your pocket. Do you think that it’s better than the 4 tonnes stone they use in exchanges? It’s currency and should be just a proof that you have money somewhere, but things changed. For thousand years people used gold, silver and other valuable resources as money. When things evolved, those resources (money) were placed in the bank and the bank issued banknotes guaranteeing that the owner had that deposit in gold/silver. Thus when the owner gave the banknote to someone else (currency), it transferred the ownership of his ‘real money’ but without physically exchanging it.
That’s the difference between currency and money, currency is a ‘current’ system used to change the ownership of money in an exchange. However, currencies now have very little value given that they’re not backed up by real money in the bank anymore. State banks just print currencies and throw them in diminishing even more the value they should represent (because the ‘money’, in this case gold reserves, are increasing at a very low pace compared to how fast currencies are printed).
There are currently 182 official circulating currencies in the entire world. Why so many currencies instead of just having 2-3 major ones? There isn’t right now a single model that explains why there are so many different currencies. Several say that it is a way for governments to print currencies and affect exchange rates, prices and inevitably their own revenue. They mention different currencies as being useful in allocating resources more efficiently, as detailed in this paper from the International Monetary Fund. Yet these systems don’t explain why there were different currencies even when those were linked directly to gold/silver. Maybe there’s the social part to it, the legacy of a certain nation.
Until we’ll know for sure why there can’t be a currency union, we can at least learn to associate one with a particular country. Are you a frequent abroad traveller? If so, do you think you know at least 10% off the total currencies in circulation? ‘The Currency Quiz’ will put your knowledge to test if you own an Android smartphone.
The game
‘The Currency Quiz’ is a simple game for Android where the goal is to guess the currency of a set of countries. It has a very simple gameplay where you just start the game, choose one of the 5 levels (each having different countries) and then simply start the quiz. You’ll be presented with a country name/flag and you have to type in the name of the currency. The app knows better than to ask you for the full name of a currency, thus there’s no need to type in ‘British Pound Sterling’ as you can just type in ‘Pound’ to answer the question.
Here are the main features of ‘The Currency Quiz’:
- Type the currency. The core of the game is guessing the correct currency of a given country. When the quiz starts you have a text field where you have to type in the name of the currency. If you’re correct, you’ll see a green checkmark and a button to go to the ‘Next’ country in line. If you don’t guess well, you’ll have to retry or simply ‘Skip’ that question.
Type the currency and tap on ‘Try it’
- Five levels. Before starting the game you have to choose one of the five available levels. Each level will have in parentheses the number of countries that it has in the currency quiz. The first levels are easier, in the sense that more common countries and currencies are included, with the latter ones increasing in difficulty. I bet you don’t know the currency in Iran (unless you live/d there), even if it’s a country that is often mentioned in news. There are a total of 237 countries divided in those 5 levels, so a lot of guesses to do. Granted, one quarter of those countries share the same currency, but still it’s a matter of knowing which one.
Five different levels of difficulty
- Statistics. The game has a ‘Statistics’ section where you’ll be able to see how well you did in your quizzes thus far. Aside this section where you see the statistics, whenever you start a level you will see the list of all the countries included in that level and the ones that you’ve guessed correctly will have a checkmark in front of them.
Checkmarks show your progress
- Free. ‘The Currency Quiz’ is free to play and doesn’t contain advertisements. It was developed by BinaryOptions, a website focusing on delivering binary option trading tips and resources.
If you want to test your knowledge on world’s currencies, you can go ahead and download it directly from Google Play: Download The Currency Quiz.
Name: The Currency Quiz
Developer: AppMantra
Size: 10Mb
Package: air.com.deveck.games.CurrencyQuiz.apk
Version: 1.0.0
Last update: July 10, 2013
Price: Free
