On coins

[SuperNoob]

can't really do trading when you're offline still...use a vending stand with criminal acts turned on and you take whatever you like. noone is going to pay for the 50 pearls you have on the stand when they can steal them far easier.

[Zirikana]

[edit: sorry, kinda off topic... i should pay attention while posting...]

[Shinma]

can't really do trading when you're offline still...use a vending stand with criminal acts turned on and you take whatever you like. noone is going to pay for the 50 pearls you have on the stand when they can steal them far easier.

That could be handled by a number of in-game methods already in place. Scents, tracking, trusted markets for trusted allies, etc., etc.

The keys to adoption of coinage as something to use would appear to be the ability to make a particular coinage unique and the introduction of a seedbag like coin purse or wallet for carrying coins. With those two features, it would seem to be just a matter of time before one of the trader groups adopted coinage. I could see EC using them quite readily. I look forward to the Brodgar thread describing how their coin press got stolen.

[Sevenless]

can't really do trading when you're offline still...use a vending stand with criminal acts turned on and you take whatever you like. noone is going to pay for the 50 pearls you have on the stand when they can steal them far easier.

That could be handled by a number of in-game methods already in place. Scents, tracking, trusted markets for trusted allies, etc., etc.

The keys to adoption of coinage as something to use would appear to be the ability to make a particular coinage unique and the introduction of a seedbag like coin purse or wallet for carrying coins. With those two features, it would seem to be just a matter of time before one of the trader groups adopted coinage. I could see EC using them quite readily. I look forward to the Brodgar thread describing how their coin press got stolen.

See that's kinda the kicker here. "One of the trader groups" just wouldn't be enough to make a currency system truly fly.

There'd have to be cooperation between multiple groups to make a true currency, and then you get down to they very sticky issue of base currency value. Either the currency is worth par to its base components (Trader groups probably won't bother, it's a pain in the ass to produce it anyway) or it's worth more than par (issuers would gain relative power over the currency compared to non-issuers = cohesion issues between the trader groups).

All in all, there's still a lot of factors going against currency systems being supported by coins. Unique currencies being produced per coinpress might help, but not enough. Coinbags would be a good step towards making it even potentially viable.

Besides which, we already do have currencies going on. Pearls are actually currency within haven. Pretty much everyone accepts them and they are portable and value dense.

"The four primary characteristics of money are: (1) durability, (2) divisibility, (3) transportability, and (4) noncounterfeitability"

Durability need not apply since there's no "wearing" in virtual world (I guess bear corpses could never be a currency though). #2 isn't perfect, but most purchases are more than 1 pearl total anyway. #3 check, #4 check.

Not bad really.

[Seldon]

If metals were traded as currency, signing coins would be a good idea in theory (mainly for advertisement and expanding influence) but it would be a nightmare to implement because coins are stackable and you would have to differentiate between differently minted coins within stacks and so on. It would also be meaningless, as silver and gold would be traded due to the underlying value of the metal itself, and trying to implement fiat with common metal coins would be unenforceable.

It might be useful to have gold and silver coinage for its divisibility, but (correct me if I'm wrong here) precious metals seem to be too rare at this point and prohibitively expensive to specifically mine for so it isn't really possible, and since coins aren't generally used for trade, coin presses are generally not worth the trouble to make. As far as other metals go, there's no point in minting iron coins because it's too common and more useful for other things, nor steel because it's time-intensive to make and much better put to use elsewhere. Tin and copper might be useful for petty exchanges, but those aren't really worth minting either. Then there's the issue of quality, i.e. what would be the minimum standard for trade, how would q10 compare to q40, etc., which was already mentioned earlier in this thread.

Either the currency is worth par to its base components (Trader groups probably won't bother, it's a pain in the ass to produce it anyway)

It doesn't have to be produced until explicitly needed, and it would be taken for granted that 100 coins = 1 bar anyway.

or it's worth more than par (issuers would gain relative power over the currency compared to non-issuers = cohesion issues between the trader groups).

Seigniorage doesn't really work because you can't really reduce the purity of gold and silver in the game in the same way you can in real life. Besides, can you even imagine how much that would complicate things if it were ever implemented?

Coinbags would be a good step towards making it even potentially viable.

Or you could just allow them to be stored in seed bags (which you rename "leather pouch" or something like that). It shouldn't be able to hold more than 100 coins, though (so it won't be some kind of weird matter-compression technique).

Besides which, we already do have currencies going on. Pearls are actually currency within haven. Pretty much everyone accepts them and they are portable and value dense.

Not to mention boletes, flotsams, edelweiß, and other curios, which all seem to have similar point values in trade threads (with some variation here and there). For instance, q20+ boletes are generally 10 pts. Pearls are probably the most standardized since most of them come in q10. Personally I think it's rather crude and I'd rather be using those forageable curios myself, but the problem is that nobody seems to trade precious metals for things anyway. I noticed in one thread where one guy was buying gold nuggets at 100 pts, but I don't really know whether that's a fair value for them or not since I haven't been playing long enough to run into gold yet. Assuming it is, then a single coin = 10 pts and so on. Then there's silver, which is also another alternative but its value relative to gold will always tend to fluctuate.

You really can't have an advanced economy without coinage, but the current state of affairs in this game wouldn't be able to support one anyway. It would be interesting to have it since it might lead to things like banking, currency exchanges, lending, etc. Well, probably not, but who really knows.

[Seldon]

Actually I just thought of an idea for "signing" currently writable objects like runestones and parchment, which could either be used to make promissory notes or contracts, assuming that anyone would ever be willing to make or use them. At the very least, it could be used to sign messages written in-game. This is probably not totally secure, but nobody within the community would be willing to go through the trouble of forging them anyway.

1. Set a keyword, preferably a unique one for each message you write out. (The idea is somewhat similar to serial numbers on a dollar bill.) It could be a timestamp that you record or something, I don't know.
2. Compose your message, 80 characters max (excluding hashcode).
3. Take the SHA-256 hash of the entirety of the message concatenated with your keyword, i.e. hash(message + keyword), or hash(keyword + message), or whatever method you prefer. Truncate it by taking either the first or last 16 hexadecimal digits, or whichever digits you want. (You can choose to keep the method you use for security; nobody else has to know because they're not the one verifying it.)
4. Append the hashcode; add a vertical bar or number sign or something to divide it from the message body.
5. Write the message to the parchment or runestone of your choice.

Here's an example. The keyword here is "password."



The flaw is that it's easily duplicated, but if the issuer keeps a record of the notes already redeemed, it should be easy to prevent someone from using the same hashcode twice. Also, I just realized that it can't really be traded as a bearer instrument, because someone might trade it to another person but secretly make a copy of it and redeem it first, and so on. This could be prevented if there was some in-game way to sign it cryptographically, but that'd have to be implemented by loftar.

[Samu]

Haven is good for me with no money. Real world is fucked up with that. I like haven for not having money.

[TeckXKnight]

Haven is good for me with no money. Real world is fucked up with that. I like haven for not having money.

While simple, there is some merit to this. Many game economies turn to barter based ones because money based economies see inflation and hyper-inflation is bad for everyone. In the real world, an annual average inflation rate of ~3% is enough to piss people off; in video games we see inflation rates closer to 100x that due to more people constantly joining into it. If the money doesn't inflate, these people cannot join into the market -- but every time it inflates the value of the money lowers as a whole.

A market that was putting out money would need someone constantly watching the logistics of it all or you could end up accidentally over-inflating or, worse, not producing enough money and in turn creating a massive disparity between the rich and the poor. The poor would simply be incapable of buying into your market at any point and thus are locked out.

Goods bartering is self regulating and simple, which is nice.

[spectacle]

Constant inflation is unlikely to happen with haven's metal based coins. If the monetary value of a coin becomes too low it will be removed from the economy, joined with others and turned into a bar, and crafted into something useful.

Signed coins could allow for a monetary economy to form, but they would have to be backed by a massive, dominant economy such as Sodom or A.D. Then people could use coins to trade among each other safe in the knowledge that they could eventually redeem those coins for top-quality goods. It doesn't seem like any such economy is likely to form at the present, though.

[overtyped]

Haven is good for me with no money. Real world is fucked up with that. I like haven for not having money.

Bob dole supports this statement. Using trade goods as the currency, is the best. For people that say, well its harder to store your currency when its in a material form, but you could convert them all to the highest currency * pearls* to save space.