Re: Charles Ponzi
Famous, but not at all the first:
We learnt about the South Sea Bubble at school:
…peaking in 1720 before collapsing to little above its original flotation price; the economic bubble became known as the South Sea Bubble. The Bubble Act 1720, which forbade the creation of joint-stock companies without royal charter, was promoted by the South Sea company itself before its collapse.
Also
Little Dorrit (1855 - 1857) identifies such schemes.
The Way We Live Now (1875) identifies such schemes.
So obviously much older. It wouldn't surprise me if the Ancient Romans did it 2000 years ago.
Gold coins from about 500BC (or earlier) became Electrum. The proportion of silver (and sometimes copper) was gradually increased. Pure gold is too soft for a coin anyway. The idea of gold as a standard survived in west till 20th C. Modern Fiat Currency using paper money was established in the 11th C. in China. It's really only a problem if the Government gets corrupt and stupid, because printing too much is self defeating (Hungary & Germany in the past, South America and Zimbabwe today).
Bitcoin seems designed to aid money laundering and pyramid selling. The mechanism to create coins is in the private control of rich people that can afford the mining computers and have cheap electricity.
Little Dorrit is a novel by Charles Dickens, originally published in serial form between 1855 and 1857. It satirises the shortcomings of both government and society, including the institution of debtors' prisons, where debtors were imprisoned, unable to work, until they repaid their debts. The prison in this case is the Marshalsea, where Dickens's own father had been imprisoned. Dickens is also critical of the lack of a social safety net, the treatment and safety of industrial workers, as well the bureaucracy of the British Treasury, in the form of his fictional "Circumlocution Office".
The Way We Live Now is a satirical novel by Anthony Trollope, published in London in 1875 after first appearing in serialised form. It is one of the last significant Victorian novels to have been published in monthly parts.
Comprising 100 chapters, The Way We Live Now was Trollope's longest novel, and is particularly rich in sub-plot. It was inspired by the financial scandals of the early 1870s; Trollope had just returned to England from abroad, and was appalled by the greed and dishonesty those scandals exposed. This novel was his rebuke. It dramatised how such greed and dishonesty pervaded the commercial, political, moral, and intellectual life of that era.