What is Banknote?
[[File:200 Türk Lirası front.jpg|thumb|right|200 [[Turkish Lira]] bank note]] [[File:Volume193.gif|thumb|A white £5 note, issued in 1935]] [[File:Jiao zi.jpg|thumb|World's earliest paper money, ''[[Song Dynasty]]'', 11th century]] [[File:Benjamin Franklin nature printed 55 dollar front 1779.jpg|thumb |Fifty-five dollar bill in 'Continental currency'; leaf design by [[Benjamin Franklin]], 1779]] A '''banknote''' (more commonly known as a '''bill''' in the [[United States]] and [[Canada]]) is a paper by which a [[bank]] promises to pay to the bearer on demand. Together with [[coin]]s, banknotes make up the [[cash]] forms of all modern [[money]]. Coins are generally used for lower valued monetary units, and banknotes for higher values. Originally, the value of money was determined by the [[value]] of the [[material]] the money was made of, such as [[silver]] or [[gold]]. However, carrying around a lot of precious metal was cumbersome and often dangerous. As an alternative, banknotes would be issued. In financial terms, a note is a promise to pay someone money. Banknotes were originally a promise to give an amount of precious metal to anyone who presented the paper. People could pay for things by giving the banknote, and thus the stored value (usually in gold or silver coins kept in the bank's vault) that the banknote promised. == Banknotes in Europe == In [[Europe]] the first paper money consisted of paper 'coins' issued in Protestant Leyden (today, [[Leiden]]) in the [[Netherlands]] during the Spanish siege of 1574. Over 5000 of the estimated 14,000 residents of Leyden died, mostly due to starvation. Even leather (often used to create emergency currency) was boiled and used to feed the people. So to create currency, the residents took covers and paper from hymnals and church missives and created paper planchets, which were struck using the same dies that were previously used to mint coins. The first proper European banknotes were issued by [[Stockholms Banco]], a predecessor of the [[Bank of Sweden]], in