The First Bank of Eastern Europe Was a Monastery. And It Ran on Salt. | FakeOFF

History enjoys disguising financial revolutions as religious institutions. The first central bank of Eastern Europe had no tellers, no ledgers in any modern sense — but it had salt warehouses, a network of monastic outposts stretching from Constantinople to Scandinavia, and a lever of political pressure that made Kyiv's princes flinch. It was the Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra. And its real asset wasn't prayer. It was salt.
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