💸 To remove currency status 🚫 To stop earning money

to demonetize

1 8.2

Make a type of money no longer legal to use for payment

verb
/ˌdiːˈmɒnɪtaɪz/

Formal

: desmonetizar

So what we did is we demonetized the sovereign debt for the most part and we rolled into Bitcoin.
demonetized silver

And I would argue that silver has been demonetized already.

Examples

Deceit I mentioned earlier to defame, to destabilise, to demonetize, where possible destroy.
Silver was never "demonetized"; its attraction as a reserve asset changed over time, as many other assets do; and whether its value rises or falls has nothing to do with the relationship between the flows associated with reserve accumulation and the flows associated with the sum of the current and capital accounts.

Blog text (18)
Proposals to eliminate it—or at least to demonetize and no longer issue large denomination notes—are prevalent (Rogoff 1998, 2016; Sands 2016).

Academic text (2018)
In 1965, the U.S. government officially demonetized silver, making it no longer a legal currency for transactions.
Many countries have demonetized their old currency notes to prevent counterfeiting and improve economic stability.
When a nation demonetizes its currency, it means that the money can no longer be used for legal payments.

Antonyms

to legalize

135 3.7

Make something allowed by law

Surface Forms

demonetize infinitive

demonetized past

demonetized past participle

demonetizing present participle

demonetizes third person singular

Morphology

demonetize = monetize (semi-transparent) = de + monet + ize

If a learner knows 'monetize', adding 'de-' clearly signals reversal or removal of that monetary status.

Etymology

Demonetize comes from de- meaning 'remove' and the part monetize, which is related to money. So to demonetize a coin or banknote is to take away its status as official money, which is why it can no longer be used to pay.