FACT...gold and salt,YES,SALT,have been used as currency/pay for far longer than people realize.Gold and silver coinage has ALWAYS been a serious problem,because of how easy it is to debase them;shaving off the metal from the rims,until the coin is worth far less than its original value.And then there was the breaking a coin into pieces (the Spanish Doubloon was used for this for quite a long time,into even our early foundation!),which is why our quarter is called " 2 bits",in slang.
...the shaving was an ancient thing dating back to the early Italian bankers, who would keep a file mounted on the cash drawer and pass the edge of each coin they took in along it. That's why our coins have the serrated edge.
Climbed up to the Hohensalzburg. A trek never forgotten.