money. This is money that is declared legal tender and issued by a central bank but, unlike representative money, cannot be converted into, for example, a fixed weight of gold. It has no intrinsic value—the paper used for banknotes is in principle worthless—yet is still accepted in exchange for goods and services because people trust the central bank to keep the value of money stable over time. If central banks were to fail in this endeavour, fiat money would lose its general acceptability as a medium of exchange and its attractiveness as a store of value.
