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"Chartalism" is generally conceived as a doctrine that states that money is a creation of the state. The father of chartalism, Georg Friedrich Knapp, even devoted the title of his magnum opus, The State Theory of Money, to highlighting this connection. Our purpose is to show that the chartalist theory, as developed by Knapp in his book, did not really argue that means of payment were necessarily a creation of the state. A close reading of his book reveals that means of payment could emerge outside the state and that even other pay-communities were able to create chartal means of payment. That is the main reason why Knapp's theory of money was not radically incompatible with Carl Menger's.

The discussions of the Bullionist Controversy were closely related to the effects of inconvertibility on prices and exchange rates. However, during their discussions, economists had a need to address other important questions such as the convenience of free banking. In this paper, we will study the perspective of the different schools involved in the debate on this issue: we will show that their positions were wholly coherent with their underlying assumptions on the nature of monetary assets. The economists who viewed gold and banknotes as perfect substitutes, such as the radical bullionists, tended to favor a ban on free banking. On the contrary, the economists who viewed banknotes and gold as imperfect substitutes, such as the moderate bullionists and antibullionists, were inclined to favor free banking.