Jonathan James Mathew, 35, Stylianos Contogoulas, 44, Jay Vijay Merchant, 45, Alex Pabon, 37, and Ryan Reich, 34, are accused of manipulating the rate between 1 June 2005 and 31 August 2007.
The prosecution told the court that "they were driven by money... to make more profit on their trading".
The five defendants deny one count of conspiracy to defraud.
The court also heard that the financial position of every company, every government, perhaps every household was directly or indirectly sensitive to Libor in one way or another.
The trial at Southwark Crown Court, which began on Tuesday, is expected to last 12 weeks.
Prosecution counsel James Hines QC said that to maximise their profits, the defendants agreed to manipulate or rig the US dollar Libor rate to the advantage of their trades and to the disadvantage of the people who they were doing trades with.
Submitters, who contributed to the setting of the Libor rate by revealing the interest rates at which their banks were willing to lend at, were told if the traders wanted the rate to go up or down, the prosecution alleged.
Libor - the London interbank offered rate - is an interest rate used by banks around the world to set the price of financial products worth trillions of pounds.
The ability to organise even minor movements in the rate had the potential to generate bumper profits for a trader.

The link is suggested by a study of 19,000 women in the US who were asked about their diet in the year leading up to pregnancy.
A healthy diet was one with plenty of fresh fish, fruit, nuts and vegetables.
Pregnant women and women trying to conceive are already advised to take certain supplements.
Experts recommend folic acid to reduce the risk of other birth defects like spina bifida, and vitamin D for healthy bones and teeth.
In England, the government's Healthy Start scheme provides vouchers for pregnant women that can be used to buy milk and vegetables.
In the study, published in Archives of Diseases in Childhood Fetal & Neonatal Edition, half of the women had babies with heart problems while the other half did not.
When the researchers compared the diets of these two groups they found a healthier maternal diet was associated with a lower chance of congenital heart defects.
Pregnant women in the top 25% (quartile) of diet quality, had a lower risk of having a baby with certain heart defects - atrial septal defects and Tetralogy of Fallot - than those in the bottom 25%, even after accounting for other factors such as whether the mother took folic acid or was a smoker.
Congenital heart disease is one of the most common types of birth defect, affecting up to nine in every 1,000 babies born in the UK.
Mild defects, such as holes in the heart, often don't need to be treated, as they may improve on their own and may not cause any further problems. But others can be more serious and some, lethal.
In most cases, something has gone wrong in the early development of the foetus. Some heart conditions are due to faulty genes or chromosomes. But often it is unclear why the baby's heart has not developed normally, says the British Heart Foundation (BHF).
Victoria Taylor, senior dietitian at the BHF, said: "This is an interesting study which highlights the importance of diet right from the start of life.
"A healthy diet before, during and after pregnancy can have benefits for both mother and child and, as seen here, the whole diet should be taken into consideration, rather than solely focusing on individual nutrients.
"Eating well isn't a guaranteed way to avoid congenital heart defects, but this will be another factor that will motivate women planning a pregnancy to make healthy choices."
Five former Barclays employees have been accused of conspiring to defraud, by fixing the Libor interest rate.
[NEXT_CONCEPT]
Women who eat healthily before and during pregnancy may cut the risk of their baby developing a heart problem, researchers believe.