Characteristics
The term fiat money has been defined variously as:
- any money declared by a government to be legal tender.
- state-issued money which is neither convertible by law to any other thing, nor fixed in value in terms of any objective standard.
- money without intrinsic value.
While gold- or silver-backed representative money entails the legal requirement that the bank of issue redeem it in fixed weights of gold or silver, fiat money's value is unrelated to the value of any physical quantity. Even a coin containing valuable metal may be considered fiat currency if its face value is higher than its market value as metal.
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