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Once communities agreed money was money, the next problem was proving it. A short walkthrough of how the first stamped coins replaced weighing-and-biting with institutional trust - collapsing transaction costs, enabling vast empires, and introducing a brand-new failure mode: debasement, the silent inflation that toppled currencies long before paper money existed.

Israel's final count gives Netanyahu's bloc 53 seats and the opposition 48, leaving both short of 61 as President Herzog urges leaders to avoid a repeat vote.

Fragment came out of stealth with $56M, with 8VC leading the Series A and General Catalyst and A* co-leading the seed. Its AI agents resolve procurement and payment exceptions at large manufacturers.

How did money break free from metal? A short walkthrough of paper money's accidental origin in medieval China - warehouse receipts that quietly became more useful than the gold inside the warehouse - the Yuan Dynasty hyperinflation that followed, Europe's 600-year-later adoption through private banks, the fractional reserve trick that multiplied money supply, and why digital money is just the same idea taken to its logical conclusion: trust in a promise, with no physical form required.

Wabi raised $55M at a $1.25B valuation, led by IVP with a16z and Forerunner. It makes a personal AI assistant.

Ukraine receives about 12 US Patriot missiles a month, Zelenskyy says, while Russian strikes hit its cities.

Rubio hosts G20 foreign ministers in Atlanta as Lavrov arrives, with Ukraine, Iran, tariffs and a $113 Brent price dividing the world's largest economies.

For most of the 20th century, money was tethered to gold - and then, in a single August evening in 1971, that tether was cut. A short walkthrough of how the gold standard actually worked, why a fixed gold price ($35 an ounce) became an economic straitjacket, what Bretton Woods tried to do, why Nixon ended gold convertibility, and why fiat money - backed by nothing but trust - turned out to be more flexible, more resilient, and the foundation of every modern economy.

Braid, a Dutch startup in The Hague, raised a $38M Series A led by Octopus Ventures. Its API lets businesses embed mobile connectivity in their own products.

If fiat money isn't backed by gold, silver, or anything you can actually touch - why does anyone accept it? A short walkthrough of the three foundations that hold modern currencies up: legal enforcement (legal tender laws), institutional control (central banks), and confidence (sustained public trust). Plus the role taxes play in creating baseline demand, why hyperinflation is the one failure mode that ends a fiat currency, and why the U.S. dollar - pure paper for half a century - became the most powerful currency in human history.

Machenta, a London robotics startup, raised a $40M seed round.

President Trump chose negotiations over immediate tariffs on imported robotics and industrial machinery, giving Commerce and USTR 180 days to report back.

Only 2% of the money in the world is physical - coins and bills. The other 98% is digital: numbers in databases, IOUs from your bank, balances that move between accounts without anyone ever printing a thing. A short walkthrough of what digital money actually is (a bank's promise to pay), how fractional reserve banking lets banks create new money by lending, why payment networks (cards, ACH, blockchain) make digital money usable, and the one failure mode that has haunted the system for centuries: the bank run.