Centuries-old currency, no longer in circulation. Paul Revere’s bank book. One of the earliest counterfeit checks. The first lottery in North America, started in Massachusetts. Stock certificates from the Boston Celtics and the Boston Red Sox. These are among the hundreds of historical artifacts featured in the new Museum of American Finance, a Smithsonian affiliate opening in Boston’s Seaport.

The challenge is interpreting these artifacts for visitors and connecting them to the larger story of finance in America, said museum CEO and President David Cowen.

“We know finance is really intimidating and so we're going to couch that in the lessons of history,” said Cowen. “We try to really make it fun and engaging with the understanding of how difficult for many people finances is as topic.”

Take for example, a document crafted by Alexander Hamilton, fought over in the room where it happened, as described in the Broadway musical bearing his name, that laid out his vision for how the new nation should handle its debts from the Revolutionary War.

“Hamilton writes that saying it's a moral obligation that we should assume all this debt. And that is the creation of our national debt. There's a direct line from this to today's $39 trillion,” said Cowen. “Now, this is 16,316 words. We boil it down to six words: It was the price of liberty.”

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Cowen is also a financial historian and co-author of "Alexander Hamilton on Finance, Credit, and Debt" and "Financial Founding Fathers: The Men Who Made America Rich."

Visitors can also speak to the nation’s first secretary of the treasury—or at least an AI-generated version of him. The interactive Alexander Hamilton exhibit can quiz visitors and answer questions about finance in dozens of languages.

“We want people that are coming into the museum to be able to have this conversation experience where they are in their own language and at their own financial literacy levels, so they can learn more as they go,” said Erich Umar, head of technology strategy & planning at the Fidelity Center for Applied Technology, which helped develop the exhibit.

The museum guides guests through three centuries of financial history in the United States.

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An exhibit providing an interactive timeline was developed with guest curator Mark Higgins, author of "Investing in US Financial History."

“I wrote this over three and a half years, and I walked my way to the present over three and a half years and you just see the same things repeating over and over. The technology changes, the situations change a little, but it's the same human stories. And once you understand that, the present and the future becomes a lot less scary,” said Higgins.

From there, the museum explores the future of finance, explaining cryptocurrencies, blockchain and more.

“More and more people are getting involved in this because they do realize it's faster, safer, cheaper, and easier to function with money in crypto than it is through the traditional methodologies that we've had for centuries,” said Ric Edelman, guest curator, personal finance author and executive director of the Personal Finance Institute. “But at the same time, there are risks. There remain crypto frauds. And it is largely because people have heard of crypto, but they really don't know what it is. And if you don't know what it is, it's hard to separate the real from the fake.”

Finally, the personal finance gallery gives visitors a chance to learn more about how to achieve their financial goals.

“Personal finance is more personal than finance. It's all about goals. What are you trying to accomplish? It's not about just making money in the stock market. It's all about getting into college, buying a home, paying for a wedding, caring for aging parents, leaving a legacy for your children. What are your goals? What is it you're trying to accomplish? That's the key to personal finance,” said Edelman.

The Museum of American Finance is free because of corporate and private sponsorships. It opens to the public on July 3.