The Museum of Money in Dallas: from ancient coins to crypto
In downtown Dallas, the ground floor of the Federal Reserve Bank houses a public space that surprises most local residents. The Mo'Money — formally the Museum of Money — was featured by Atlas Obscura this month as a free-entry collection open Monday to Friday, 09:00 to 15:00.
The museum's thematic layout divides 2,500 years of money's history into six rooms. The first room is titled "Ancient": King Croesus of Lydia's electrum coins from the 6th century BC, silver drachmas of the Greek polis, Roman denarii. The Lydian coins make Anatolia visible as the global birthplace of money. A note in the museum catalogue reads, "Reading this room shows how late modern economy was born."
The second room covers the medieval period, from the Byzantine solidus to Venetian ducats, Ottoman akçe and sultanis. Its central display features a 14th-century specimen of paper money from the Yuan dynasty in China — the first paper money in world history. The museum consultant Dr Anne McCants, a former Federal Reserve economist, told BBC History: "The Chinese discovery of paper money laid the foundations of modern monetary theory."
The third room — "Modern Europe" — follows the birth of central banking in the 17th to 19th centuries. The Banco Giro di Venezia (1619), the Bank of England (1694), the Banque de France (1800) and the Reichsbank (1876) are featured. The display cases highlight the plates, dies and casts used in paper money production. In one corner the "Sterling Story" exhibit traces the 1797 gold exit, the 1925 return to the gold standard, the 1931 exit, and the move to today's floating currency system.
The fourth room is dedicated to America. An important section of US monetary history extends from the founding of the First Bank of the United States in 1791 to the Federal Reserve Act of 1913. The museum also covers the 1914 establishment of the Dallas Federal Reserve Bank — special exhibits trace the federalisation of Texas oil, beef export and cotton trade. Confederate States of America banknotes from the Civil War give a history lesson on the limits of monetary union.
The fifth room is on the 20th-century hyperinflations: Weimar Germany's 100-trillion-mark note (1923), Hungary's pengo (1946), Zimbabwe's 100-trillion-dollar note (2008). Alongside this room a digital panel shows real-time inflation rates for every country. Türkiye's inflation history has its own sub-section — particularly the 1994 crisis and the post-2001 restructuring process.
The sixth room is the newest addition: "The Digital Age of Money," opened in 2018 and updated in 2024. Display cases include early Bitcoin mining specimens from 2013, the first transaction on the Ethereum blockchain, and a Chinese digital yuan CBDC sample. The museum features an interactive panel that also maps the Federal Reserve's CBDC research work. This room's visitor count was twice that of the other rooms in 2024-2025.
Mo'Money's daily visitor numbers run from 350 to 450; the museum hosted a total of 87,000 visitors in 2025. Thirty per cent are student groups, 45 per cent are business travellers passing through, and 25 per cent are Dallas locals. Its education partner Southern Methodist University runs a course on economic history with the museum each semester. The course is held in the large meeting room which is closed to the public on Tuesday mornings.
Museum director Eric Hughes told Atlas Obscura: "Money is an object, but every piece carries a story. A Roman coin tells you about imperial expansion, a Reichsbank note about Germany after the First World War, a Bitcoin specimen about the aftermath of the 2008 global financial crisis." Hughes said the museum is planning a new addition for mid-2027 — under the heading "Climate and Money", tracing the financing of fossil fuels and the historical arc of green bonds.
Mo'Money sits within a comparable network across the Federal Reserve system — the Atlanta, Chicago, San Francisco and Cleveland Federal Reserve banks each have collections, but the Dallas collection is the largest and the oldest (founded in 1972, refurbished in 2008). The museum offers audio guides for visitors over 50 and a gamified app for high-school students. In monetary-history education, Mo'Money now ranks among the three most-visited museums in Texas.