5 great tips for creating a fantasy currency that helps your plot!

Count your pennies... But what if you don't have pennies in your world? There is a great deal of merit in designing memorable currency for your fantasy world. Currency can be useful in bringing the symbolism of your world to life and even in nation building. Explore the thematic potential of currencies with Marie Mullany today.

Chapters:
0:00​​ Intro
1:10 Money as a Concept
6:30​​ Symbolism and Money
10:10 No coins?
11:05 How to build a Currency

References:

#justintimeworlds #mariemullany #economics #curriencies

[StephenFriedman]

A great demonstration of trust in currency is Rai Stones: large, difficult to move stones that would seldom be physically involved in a transaction. People would simply remember who owned how much of which stone. This system was best demonstrated when one stone sank in-transit betweeen islands and continued to be used as currency

[redknight]

I was researching this year's ago, and I remember coming across (but not the details of) how denominations were decided from the point of view of the accountant. For instance, it's easier to work with 1/5 and 1/4 fractions rather than 3/32 and so forth.

[owned]

This is brilliant, plenty of things I hadn't thought of. Thank you very much!

[yaraanis]

Nation building, I never thought of that. That’s so interesting!

[Raven-Blackwing]

I had never really thought about the symbolic nature of currency, thank you.

[thesilverreich]

In my world I have given the the main kingdom of czargoth a 1 guilder gold coin. a half guilder silver. coin and a copper obols coin.

[CidCostaNeto]

This video reminded me that at one point in history, salt was used as currency. So it might be interesting that some valuable substance that only exists in this world could be used as currency, like the spice in Dune.

[TeanaCoZa]

We used Thrones, Shields and crowns in our LARP. And we minted our own coins *smug*

[pabillidge]

Thank you for another great video. It is an interesting topic coming up with a creative currency that follow the principles you talked about. The sci-fi movie In Time and the fantasy novel Everless by Sara Holland use time(lifespan) as a currency. I guess it makes sense since time can be divided in seconds, minutes and hours, and of course people trust something that will keep them alive. But I think these are examples in which currency is based or derived from magic or technology, so I think for magic or technology to have an impact on the currency I guess they need to be separated to some extent at first or in these cases the impact already happened before and the story takes places afterwards.

I wonder if “substances” can work as currency. I know Brandon Sanderson used light indirectly with the Gemstone in the stormlight series, so I guess it was well done since light had a “material representation” for it to be divided (I really need to read those books). I don’t know if a water-based currency exists in some work of fiction in which world is turning into a desert.

[julialabanowski]

hahah. Somehow you always have a video released right when I'm like shoot this thing now became plot relevant and I don't have it built yet and its almost always on that thing XD

[DathLvin]

couldn't have picked a better jacket for this topic, looking like a true master of coin haha

[WritingFighter]

03:38 - Sorry, but that isn't the whole story.

Historically, almost all currencies carry intrinsic value. *Metallic-based currency have intrinsic value because they are metals*... you can *melt them down to create things* with [generally] lasting usefulness to compound their base values. An ancient king from 4000 BC for example may have hundreds of lbs or kg of copper coins, maybe taken from an enemy or seized from traders. He can melt down the copper coins into a plethora of copper tools and weapons from which he can use to boost his own economy.

Metals in coinage represent work performed in mining, cleaning, processing, and distributing by the power of the authority. When you have a society with access to multiple metals, coinage can build into differing values because some metals are intrinsically more valuable than others.

This is also the reason gold, silver, and precious gems have held such incredible value throughout society... they are *extremely* durable and resistant to age; other metals generally aren't. They look nice and they're shiny, but these precious items stand the test of time whereas rusted metal, cloth, foodstuffs, clay, paper, and other organic materials don't. Yes, they do often have some representation of promise in agreements, but also in battle standards, in protective coatings, teeth fillings, signage, and powerful sealants.

*Gold continues to be useful today in technology:* gold is used in microchips and electronics as a hyper durable, anti-corrosive, thin connective material between circuits. Your videos would not be possible without the use of gold. It's also used in a huge variety of medical instruments. A ring of gold can be melted down to help create dozens of laptops and cellphones. Diamonds are also used in technology due to their extreme resistance to heat and ability to spread laser light and transistors (like semiconductors, important for transferring and distributing electrical power in devices); we could use silicon but diamond is several times more durable for the abuse.

I can see whale teeth being useful because you can use that in making tools, and the whale teeth can represent foraged and hunted meat that was cultivated and worked for. The problem with basing a currency on something like seashells or even a foraged food source is that their amount will wax and wane heavily based on nature, and they can easily be destroyed.

One of the best representations of this is the movie _Rango_ where water becomes a form of currency in a Western-themed desert. Teef in Ork culture from _Warhammer_ are made of the teeth from fallen Ork warriors or from living Orks who were hit hard enough in the face. As a culture, Orks rely on violence, it's used in their hierarchy, settling debates, and in plundering. This means their "teef" represent work performed as an end-means. An Ork whose fellows all died in a battle but he survives, he can collect their teef as a form of their value and he the last survivor (and most worthy) can claim his mates' worth of loot. The most powerful Orks are not only the biggest, but they have the biggest teef and the largest amount.

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The concept that currency exists without any value except the backing of promise is an extremely recent idea and not really implemented en mass until 1971 when Nixon, in reaction to a French fleet on its way to collect megatons of gold reserves promised to it in payment set sail for the US. The US removed the dollar-to-gold standard value and instead set up a promise to pay with the use of the dollar. This was supposed to be a temporary solution but it stuck and now all governments lean on the idea, almost making up whatever they want; though the US secured itself by implementing (and enforcing) the concept that global oil must be traded using US dollars.

In the earliest concept, cryptocurrency is supposed to represent energy usage and availability. Processing crypto requires a "tax" of energy to be used or borrowed to verify and complete the transaction. This would then allow the digital currency to be processed independently and without a true, central authority but that's up for debate.

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That's why currency in my worldbuilding always starts off somewhere with intrinsic value of something that can be used or broken down for use in some way. I take the opportunity to look at things that exist uniquely in the world itself.

In one Fantasy world, part of the magic systems tie into a "high" currency with small token items, such as the weight in bones of a sorcerer whose magic is infused in them. The bone fragments or teeth can be used to craft magical protection charms, enchant items, or empower potions. In a different Fantasy world, a glowing moss derives mystical energy from breaking down dying, dead, and toxic organic matter. The moss can be carefully slow-burned and hardened, encased in metal, or put in a coating on objects. Different countries have their ways of utilizing it in their currencies depending on local materials to work with it, but the moss can be burned as a heat source, put in explosive devices, used to treat wounds, eaten as an emergency ration, or cultivated and grown.

Some societies in these worlds have evolved to use other items as representational currency backed by this mystical energy source and thereby an authoritative source usually linked to the government or longstanding sub-faction becomes the trusted entity. Some develop a cultural secondary currency a few even outright bizarre or based on a belief system. But it's never just built on absolutely nothing.

Especially for a society living on the brink of survival can't afford to trust in valuing something because it's shiny or because everyone else says so. It needs to contribute to something to help prop up their sense of living and living well.

[TheMichaellathrop]

Also does anyone know when and more importantly why governments started moving to a base 100 currency, or more precisely why they did not do so earlier? My assumption is that it was enabled by moving to a reserve currency system, but I'm not really sure.
I've always found the fantasy trope of ten(or 100) copper to the silver and silver to the gold to odd because with coins made out of precious metals the value to conversion rate would never line up so neatly, I've always preferred when fantasy authors simply rip off the value conversions from some historical system or another I tend to find that the untidiness makes the world feel both more real and more lived in granting it a greater verisimilitude than a cleaner system would.
Though I suppose setting your story in a time frame where you have both the old 12 copper shillings to a silver penny and 20 pennies to the gold pound English system(pre pound sterling) and a 100 pents to a pound paper reserve system at the same time could be used in interesting ways and could drive some interesting plots. Do bills work in all the same rituals that need coins? They certainly don't work if what you needed was X weight of the metal, and the Fey may not be as willing to take them as readily as your milk man in exchange for services rendered(I meant that your milk man would take the paper money less than I meant that the Fae would demand your milk man... but that almost seems like what the Fae might end up demanding especially if someone points that fact out after they already turned down the paper money.

[cityman]

Where in Harry Potter does it say that magical counterfeiting does not work? Hermione produces fake galleons that look like real galleons.