Carl Menger published On the Origins of Money in 1892, and it remains arguably the most devastating refutation of the statist theory of money ever written. Menger worked in Vienna during the late 19th century, when the German Historical School dominated European economics. That school rejected universal economic laws and insisted governments shape institutions deliberately. Menger spent his career dismantling that claim. His 1871 "Principles of Economics" launched the marginalist revolution, and his 1892 essay finished the job on monetary theory specifically. The core argument is simple and brutal: nobody invented money. No king decreed it, no parliament voted it into existence. Individual traders, acting on self-interest, gradually converged on the most saleable commodity available to them. Gold and silver won because they are durable, divisible, portable, and scarce. This process happened spontaneously, across cultures, without central coordination. Menger called the most saleable good the most "liquid" commodity, and traced how liquidity differences between goods naturally selected winners over centuries of voluntary exchange. Menger exposes the state's foundational lie: that money derives its validity from government authority. Every central bank, every fiat currency regime, every IMF directive operates on that lie. The Federal Reserve, which prints dollars with no commodity anchor and has destroyed roughly 97% of the dollar's 1913 purchasing power, exists entirely because the state captured and corrupted a spontaneous market institution. Menger's legacy is the intellectual ammunition to say clearly that central banks are parasites on a system they did not build and cannot improve. The market created money, then Governments hijacked it.