History shows us that money can be many things: from sea shells (used in the Americas, Africa, Asia and Australasia for long periods), paper notes (from Chengdu in China c.900AD, the first paper money in history), salt (widely used, for example in Ancient Egypt and nineteenth-century Ethiopia), cows in early medieval Ireland, to coins and cryptocurrencies (such as bitcoin). Some economic historians even consider mobile phones to be money.
Economists draw a distinction between commodity money, which has a value in and of itself (such as precious metals), and fiat money, which has no intrinsic value but is established by governments as a unit of exchange. Today, all the major currencies of the world are fiat money. Increasingly, we deal with money not as physical objects in the form of coins and notes, but as deposits in bank accounts which we access by electronic means such as bank cards, phones and watches.
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