[Image taken from here]
Have you ever heard of tally sticks? They were a form of money, used in many different places throughout history.
One very interesting type of tally stick was the split tally, introduced in 12th century England, by King Henry the 1st.
A split tally is a tally stick cut in two pieces (through the length of the stick), one half being given to each party of a financial transaction. It was very hard to counterfeit, because it was essentially impossible to find a piece of wood with an identical pattern.
Thus, the idea of using things which are believed to be hard to fake to protect the integrity of monetary transactions dates back to long before the advent of cryptography and cryptocurrencies!
Check this excerpt from "The Secret of Oz" for some more detail:
(Originally appeared on Uptrennd)