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Decoding E-Money Is Here

By: Graham Iddon


January 3, 2018
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The new Museum’s first special exhibition

In the Money exhibition

Our first travelling exhibition was In The Money, which premiered in our old space in 2013.

Voices from the Engraver exhibition

Next on tour was Voices from the Engraver, shown here at the Sherbrooke Nature and Science Museum.

Unlike renovating a house, when we closed the Museum for its four-year re-invention, we couldn’t just “stay” at another museum until the water got turned back on. Or could we have? In fact, once the renovation was under way, that’s essentially what we did. Though we didn’t sleep on anybody’s couch, we did create a travelling exhibitions program to keep the virtual doors open while the actual doors were closed. We stayed at museums from Kitimat, B.C., to Gimli, MB, and from Timmins, ON, to Chicoutimi, QC, and we still have a few bookings available for 2019. Now that we are again back in our own house, we’ve invited one of our wandering exhibitions home for a visit: Decoding E-Money.

Decoding E-Money electric sign

Decoding E-Money fits snugly in our exhibition space outside the entrance to the permanent galleries.

exhibition and seats

The exhibition relies on a lot of screens and was designed to be dark and immersive, as if you were inside the digital processes.

exhibition and artifact panels

The rear view shows the artifact zone—a nice, analog relief from the heavily digital zones.

As the title suggests, this exhibition aims to remove the confusion about what exactly e‑money is. It’s important to make the distinction between what people think of as e‑money and what, in fact, it is. In a backgrounder on its website, the Bank of Canada defines e‑money as

…monetary value that is stored and transferred electronically through a variety of means—a mobile phone, tablet, contactless card (or smart card), computer hard drive or servers.

Despite their fully electronic environments, debit cards, e‑mail transfers and credit cards are not examples of e‑money. They are methods of payment that follow electronic pathways along which transaction information travels. It might be more helpful to imagine e-money as money that has been withdrawn from a bank account and stuffed into an envelope waiting to be spent. The “envelope” just happens to be an electronic device.

subway style map with monitors

Our payments system map is a fun interactive that, with moving lights, shows you the route your money takes using five different payment methods.

boy at a colourful touch panel

Our hands-on timeline explores the relevant history of the money and technology that led to e-money.

kids sitting at a game kiosk

Up to four people at a time can test their knowledge of e-money and its technological background by playing a fun true-or-false game.

The version of e‑money we are most concerned with in this exhibition is cryptocurrency and, specifically, the ever-newsworthy Bitcoin. You can purchase it using your national currency, and it can be sold for currency, but in between it acts all by itself as a token of exchange that exists entirely online. Bitcoin doesn’t actually meet the criteria for a currency, but its underpinning technology, called the blockchain, is ground-breaking—a system that allows for secure transactions without third-party oversight. We studied it for you so that you can explore it too.

Like its mother museum, Decoding E‑money has a great number of interactive features. It is, fittingly, a very digital exhibition, with games, a timeline, videos and interpretive content all accessed using touch panels and computer consoles. The only significant part of the display that is not digital is the artifact zone, a breath of old-fashioned air in a very modern exhibition. Here, you will see money that was, in its day, as difficult for some to accept as digital currencies are today. To help visitors explore in-depth information about these artifacts, we provide you with a book, an appropriately low-tech medium.

three boys at a video game terminal

A fast-moving break from the exhibit is the cryptocurrency mining game. How fast can you find the right code?

inside of a blue kiosk

The big central cylinders are all about cryptocurrency.

So please drop by the Museum and check out Decoding E money. It will be in our special exhibitions space until May 6, 2018.

We want to hear from you! Do you have an idea for a blog post you’d like to see?
Content type(s): Blog posts

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The Museum Blog

February 11, 2025

Money’s metaphors

By: Phillipe Audet-Cayer, Graham Iddon, Patricia Marando


Buck, broke, greenback, loonie, toonie, dough, flush, gravy train, born with a silver spoon in your mouth… No matter how common the expression for money, many of us haven’t the faintest idea where these terms come from.
Content type(s): Blog posts
July 16, 2024

Rai: big money

By: Graham Iddon


An item is said to have cultural value when it can be directly associated with the history, people, beliefs or rituals important to a society. It’s the same with a rai—its value can be greater depending upon who authorized it, who carved it and who subsequently owned it.
Content type(s): Blog posts Subject(s): Economy, Geography, History Grade level(s): Grades 11 and 12 / Secondary 5 and CEGEP
April 18, 2024

Lessons from the Great Depression

By: Graham Iddon


A welfare coupon and piece of stock ticker tape over a 1930s black and white photo of unemployed men gathering to protest.
What the stock market crash of 1929 did was starkly reveal the weaknesses of economic systems that had evolved from the unregulated capitalism of the late 19th century.
Content type(s): Blog posts Subject(s): Financial literacy, History Grade level(s): Grade 09 / Secondary 3, Grade 10 / Secondary 4, Grades 11 and 12 / Secondary 5 and CEGEP
November 16, 2023

Understanding cryptocurrencies

By: Graham Iddon


Un circuit imprimé d’un ordinateur avec des dizaines de circuits et un ventilateur.
Most of us are aware of them, but how much do we really understand about cryptocurrencies?
Content type(s): Blog posts Subject(s): Economy, Financial literacy Grade level(s): Grade 08 / Secondary 2, Grade 09 / Secondary 3, Grade 10 / Secondary 4, Grades 11 and 12 / Secondary 5 and CEGEP
July 31, 2023

The Scenes of Canada series $100 bill

By: Graham Iddon


Few of us ever get a chance to see a Scenes of Canada $100 bill. Which is a pity, because it is an example of great bank note design with even greater imagery by a master engraver.
Content type(s): Blog posts Subject(s): History
July 13, 2023

Caring for your bank notes

By: Graham Iddon


Collecting paper money seems simple enough. But, paper is delicate stuff and demands a gentle touch.
Content type(s): Blog posts
April 4, 2023

Caring for your coins

By: Graham Iddon


Coin collecting can be a fun and fascinating hobby. But there are a few things you should know to keep your collection safe and in good condition. Because coins aren’t as robust as you might imagine.
Content type(s): Blog posts
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