A Historic Market Unveiling and the Birth of Trade

[Dawidio123]

+1 for gold standard

Huh? They're not selling gold (in fact, they're not consistently offering any item in exchange for their gold coins), and the coin costs are above their gold value (e.g.: guano is 15 quills (0.15 gold), while WEB buys it at 50 baycoins, and you can get a gold nugget there for 11 baycoins (i.e. guano is 0.45 gold there)). This is a fiat currency, worth whatever they let you buy with it. It's like claiming the US Dollar uses a cotton/zinc standard.

The difference is that you can smelt 100 gold coins back into a gold bar. That's why it's gold standard, just as dollar being worth X amount of gold (that you could exchange for at the bank during that era). So while yeah, they dictate how much the currency is worth, a 100 coins will always be worth AT LEAST a gold bar. Which in case of shop closing (as was the case with WB market), people can potentially smelt back their coins instead of being stuck with worthless currency or lead bars.

[VDZ]

+1 for gold standard

Huh? They're not selling gold (in fact, they're not consistently offering any item in exchange for their gold coins), and the coin costs are above their gold value (e.g.: guano is 15 quills (0.15 gold), while WEB buys it at 50 baycoins, and you can get a gold nugget there for 11 baycoins (i.e. guano is 0.45 gold there)). This is a fiat currency, worth whatever they let you buy with it. It's like claiming the US Dollar uses a cotton/zinc standard.

The difference is that you can smelt 100 gold coins back into a gold bar. That's why it's gold standard, just as dollar being worth X amount of gold (that you could exchange for at the bank during that era). So while yeah, they dictate how much the currency is worth, a 100 coins will always be worth AT LEAST a gold bar. Which in case of shop closing (as was the case with WB market), people can potentially smelt back their coins instead of being stuck with worthless currency or lead bars.

Yeah, but that only works as long as the goods are offered at prices that make 100 coins roughly equal to 1 gold bar, which isn't the case. The coin's monetary value is significantly above its material value, just like the US penny is worth more than the zinc it's made of. A [material] standard means you can consistently exchange it for its equivalent value in [material], which isn't the case here. If this market decides to close down you still lose most of the value of their coins.

Not that I have anything against fiat currencies (in the proper contexts). But you shouldn't be under the impression that you can sell to this market and use the value gained from that elsewhere; quills are bound to this market and cannot easily be exchanged for other currencies or valuables.