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What is Forex Trading? – An Introduction to the World of Currency Trading
A Brief History of the Forex Currency Market
The creation of the gold standard monetary system in 1875 marked one of the most significant events in the history of the Forex currency market. As countries each attached an amount of their currency to be equal to an ounce of gold the changing price of gold between two currencies became the first standardized means of currency exchange in history.
World War I brought with it the breakdown of the gold standard due to the major European powers not having enough gold to exchange for all the currency that the governments were printing off at the time in order to complete large military projects. The gold standard was used again between the wars, but by the start of World War II most countries had again dropped it, however gold never lost its spot as the ultimate form of monetary value.
n 1944 the Bretton Woods System was implemented and led to the formation of fixed exchange rates that resulted in the U.S. dollar replacing the gold standard as the primary reserve currency. This also meant that the U.S. dollar became the only currency that would be backed by gold. In 1971 the U.S. declared that it would no longer exchange gold for U.S. dollars that were held in foreign reserves, this market the end of the Bretton Woods System.
It was this break down of the Bretton Woods System that ultimately led to the mostly global acceptance of floating foreign exchange rates in 1976. This was effectively the “birth” of the current foreign currency exchange, although it did become widely electronically traded until about the mid 1990s.
