I know that most people in SR4 use credsticks for common transactions - be it in nuyen or corporate scrip. But does anyone use paper currency and coinage anymore? It just seems like small transactions between criminals wouldn't be done with commlinks since nobody trusts each other, but they'd have to if there is no longer any concept of specie circular or hard currency. If anyone has an opinion or a reference to fluff from pre-SR4 material, I'd appreciate it.

(this question came up due to a conversation about how viable the Boondock Saints methodology of leaving coins for the ferryman would be in SR)

I use paper money in my games.

E-currency is common and preferred in legal areas, to the point that cash transactions have a penalty associated with them (up to 15%, depending on store/location). Paper requires storage, on-site security, paperwork and a ton of other hassles, not to mention it slows down the pace of business. Some places forbid the use of cash completely.

It is, in essence, the exact reverse of the situation with credit cards in many smaller businesses.

Paper currency is still in heavy use among the criminal element in and the poorer sections of society. It's also a way to keep the poor out of our nice, ritzy enclaves - their money is no good (almost) and a dead give-away of their status. Using paper money at a high-end store also marks you as suspicious - another drawback.

It's a game of benefits and drawbacks - using the right currency at the right time. Paper is trustworthy (either it's all there, or it's not), hard to trace and less invasive to use.

Most places outside of corporate enclaves with accept either, generally with no penalty.

In my games, they always have and always will. Real money (of which corporate scrip is, by the way) is just much more flavorable to use and leads to all sorts of situations that an economy running on pure credit can't touch. Seeing a digit on a screen, for instance, has a significantly lower psychological punch than someone opening a briefcase loaded to the brim with bundles of 100¥ bills.

Officially, the only real discussion I've ever seen on the subject occured in the Sprawl Survival Guide, and even there they focused on electronic funds. They did, however, mention that cold hard cash was still around and in use, but electronic funds were weeding it out.

The Crash 2.0 should definitely have hit people's faith in electronic funds, though, and a huge revival of hard cash should have occured as a result. I'm not sure if it was ever mentioned in the core rulebook, but if it wasn't I'm going to be sorely disappointed. Cash is just too much fun.

Cash got more play in earlier editions, to the point that authors often described the appearance of the currency (Tir Tairngire, for example, favored plastic-fiber bills), but has been significantly de-emphasized.

One should never underestimate the usefulness of barter – many gangs will be happy to accept that crate that fell off the back of the truck as payment. Bearer bonds, diamonds, refined magical materials, precious metals; all make for diverse, plot-hook filled gameplay.
And to the OP question – I would think a certified credstick jammed through the eye socket would satisfy the old man at the river – as well as helping ensure the dearly departed is truly departed.

Not to mention that whether the currency is legal tender and in use is kinda irrelevant in the specific situation mentioned.

Just think, how awesome would it be for a character to have a huge collection of pre-crash (the first one) coins that he kept around for the sole purpose of leaving them on eyelids?

Would he also be a roman catholic gunslinger adept?

Mmm, Catholics dun do that. The ancient Greeks did.

I know.

Boondocks Saints reference, kiddo.

Older and bullion coins with greater precious metal content might be more highly prized for barter.

...even though they are a member of the NEEC,, The UK still used the Pound Sterling and most transactions were still carried out with hard currency (at least through 2063). If you went to a pub and took a out credstick loaded with to pay for your pint, you would usually receive an odd look from the barkeep at the very least.

Well whilst the nuyen is an all electronic currency a lot of the often overlooked national currencies still use physical notes and coins. I'm fairly certain that the UCAS dollar is still about in physical form.

...I beleive I read somewhere that is still is. One of the NA guides perhaps?

IMC there are various currencies in play.

There is scrip, aka paper money, from various governments. Scrip is handy as it can cross borders and maintain value. E.g. the US dollar bill is widely used across the planet.

Then comes "private" money. This most often IMC takes the form of casino chips. With embedded secure RFID tags holding unique identifiers for each chip that are verified by the casino tables, counterfeiting becomes quite difficult. Some of the smaller places will even "rent" out their chips for "private functions" and not be too choosy about when they get returned. Chips get used in place of certified cred as they are a form of "hard currency."

Then you get to bearer bonds. These are essentially blank checks made out to "cash." A decent local example of a bearer bond is a winning lottery ticket. If no one has signed it, the person holding it can cash it in. Many fixers have arrangements with bookies to buy winning sports book tickets. This way you can be paid via a middle man without directly identifying yourself to said middle man.

Then you get commodities, which are items that have a generally fixed value. Gold, orichalcum, silver, etc. are good commodities. They can be traced but only to a point. Things that stay in the underground are off the radar and anything that gets converted (say, into a weapon focus) becomes very hard to trace.

It's rather interesting actually, but the form of currency is one of the most undervalued (haha) examples of the cyberpunk ethos. If you look at arguments for the gold standard you can see what I'm talking about. Gold is great because there's a limited amount available and it's a hard commodity with its own, fairly static value. So of course, such a thing is the enemy of any major body which is seeking to increase its control over the population. This is why the US government actually made it illegal to possess gold (if my understanding of history is correct).

The progression is pretty clear:
-You start with gold with a fairly static, generally agreed upon value
-You create something else which represents and is exchangeable with gold but in itself is worthless (paper money with the gold standard)
-Detach paper currency from its gold, change the ingredients of coinage made from actual valuable elements to decrease their value.
-Centralize currency production under a few 'trusted' entities and avoid transparency
-Create an electronic medium to store and track this information which can be exchanged for currency
-... Separate the electronic currency from the physical bills?

Regardless, right now if the US government began spitting out a bazillion dollar bills, a lot of us would be very screwed. The only people whose savings would be mostly unaffected are those who have tied up their savings in actual commodities like gold or food production. Credit cards have the advantage of being able to better hide what they're actually doing, since it's all just electronic transactions. I read an article recently that said the majority of currency exchanges are for illegal activities like drug deals and for people sending money 'back home' overseas. Normal Americans do most of their business electronically. No paper to cash in, nothing to actually prove your worth, nothing you can trade with your neighbors if you're disconnected from the system. All your assets are stored on a computer well out of your control. So who is really in control of them?

I have no question there would be physical currency, even if it's mob backed (like the chips kigmatzo mentioned). 'The Man' doesn't want you to have hard currency, he wants you to use your credit card like every other good citizen (1% cash back for every purchase! Invest your 401K/TSP in Small Cap C fund for 12% return rate! Interest only loans available!) Criminals can't abide being so easily traced, so they keep to physical currency when they can. As long as there is a market, there will be a seller, even if the seller is just the government selling its own currency at quickly inflating prices. Commodities like gold might be the most stable, but it's the one that's going to be toughest to use and hold on to. I wouldn't be surprised if holding on to unregistered gold is illegal in the sixth world, and is never a valid form of legal barter, because having gold as barter takes power out of the hands of the corps and government.

Maybe that's what keeps talismongers from making as much money as they could in canon. While it takes a month to turn 1 unit of gold into 12 units of radical gold, it takes 4 months to do the paperwork and requires a business license, a $30,000 annual payment, a rating 10 background check...

Commodities markets aren't stable, either. People who make that mistake tend to get screwed up the butt by people who don't. Take, for example, the 80s silver market. Silver was in. Everybody loved it. People were buying it up left and right, eschewing other investment opportunities in the process. The price kept rising and people who were stupid enough to believe that the price would keep rising kept buying.

Some people, planning in the long term, kept millions of dollars worth of silver coins in boxes stored in their basements, vaults, hide-aways bunkers, and cold-war era bomb shelters. Then, BAM!:evil:, almost overnight their millions of dollars worth of silver was transformed into thousands of dollar worth of silver by the magic of the free market economy and its underage same-sex lover, the bursting bubble.
There were suicides.


In a free market, the value of every commodity and currency is inherently unstable. People who forget this tend to lose everything.

The difference being, the silver in the pockets of those people who had it to begin with never went below its initial value, even if there was a whole hoopla of people who artificially inflated the price for a while. Gold will never be worth significantly less than it is now (for the foreseeable future). The dollar bill most certainly will be. The nuyen should be. Renraku corp script will be. A gallon of milk will be.

Gold actually has an artificially inflated price, just one that's been high enough that people *think* that it's normal.

As an example?

The Playstation 3 is worth it's weight in *Uranium*.

Yes, Uranium ... builds nuclear plants, can be upgraded into bombs, super duper rare... worth a fraction of gold which, comparitively, is as common as all get out. You can go about anywhere and find a store that sells objects made out of gold, but, uranium?

Not so much.

Thus, gold's inherant worth is lower than that of uranium, due to being more common. That you can use it for looking pretty, and don't, you know, keel over from radiation death, is a bonus that gives it value in trade.

But that's an inflated value, rather than a rarity-based value.

*Anything* measured can be mis-measured and, when it gets corrected, look out. See also Dutch Tulips and latin Guano.

hell, diamonds can be turned out by the truckloads these days. so the diamond trades have started to label their stuff as natural diamonds vs artificial (industrial) diamonds...

You can't buy uranium at the local pawn shop because:
1) It really isn't useful for anything the average Joe does
2) It will kill you

However uranium certainly can be purchased quite easily and legally. It's like saying you can't buy arsenic any more at your corner store and therefore it's clearly more valuable than gold.

The gold supply is extremely limited. If you took all the gold in the world and put it in a pile, it would be smaller than an average sized house. Gold, unlike uranium, also has very many day to day uses; electronics, jewelry, currency, etc. Unlike diamonds, gold cannot be artificially manufactured in any meaningful quantity.

as of yet at least. it just takes to much power to get those protons, neutrons and electrons to move around in a controlled manner...

in a way, the old alchemists where right, one can turn lead into gold. but we have yet to find a power source powerful enough to pull of the feat...

I did say 'meaningful quantity' I can't expect that power ever gets cheap enough for that to be truly economical compared to finding alternatives to gold in the first place.

true that...