History·26 February 2026·4 min read
Cacao beans — the sweet money of the Aztecs
In the Aztec Empire, chocolate was literally money: you could buy food with cacao beans.
Among the Aztecs and Maya, cacao beans were common money. A rabbit cost a few dozen beans; with a hundred you bought more. Money could, literally, be turned into chocolate.
And the first counterfeiting
Because they had value, some counterfeited the beans: hollowing them out and filling them with earth. Counterfeiting money is as old as money itself — even when money was chocolate.
