Since my campaign takes place in Seattle the nuyen is our primary currency. Unfortunately I have very little information on how the currency works.

Here's what I know:

1. Nuyen has digital signatures. (pg 124 Sprawl Survival Guide)
2. "The only way to counterfeit nuyen is to copy an existing certified credstick." (Forgery rules, pg 95 Unwired)

Here's what I need to know:

1. What media can nuyen be stored on? Banks and credsticks only or anything which has memory.
2. If you can store nuyen on anything, say an optical chip or a commlink, why would you specifically need a certified credstick for forgeries?
3. If nuyen can be stored on any storage media then how is nuyen stored? One file per nuyen?
4. Is every single nuyen tracked and by whom?
5. If I steal "Nuyen A" from Bank #1 can I deposit it in Bank #2? Or is that nuyen somehow flagged as stolen?
6. Similar to the above, say I hold up a fellow and transfer his money to a certified credstick. If he reports that money as stolen, is the nuyen flagged as stolen?
7. If nuyen can be flagged as stolen what stops people (Mr J) from paying people and they saying that money was stolen? And professionalism isn't enough; half the time they try to kill you.
8. Can you move nuyen from a bank account to credsticks or can this only be done by the bank that issues the credstick? The reason that I ask this is banks use to charge (and possibly still do) charge fees for certified credsticks equal to 10% of what went on the credsticks.

I know I'm missing a few questions but this is a good starting place. Please leave references for your post if at all possible. The more facts the better.

A note: SR hasn't published oodles on the nuyen yet, so take all this with a grain of salt. Some more details will be forthcoming in Vice and Corp Guide.

Nuyen is just a file; so you can theoretically store it anywhere. In practice, however, nuyen exists only in certain secure bank systems and accessed by accounts - rather than transfer the files, the records of ownership are amended to show a transfer has occurred. Certified credsticks are generally an exception in that they contain the actual datafiles in a (mostly) tamperproof form to facilitate certain transactions. The fact that you have the actual files is what allows them to be counterfeited, and even then it's only a matter of time before the counterfeits are discovered when multiple nuyen with the same serial number shows up in the system.


You cannot normally transfer the actual files, so even moving nuyen to an optical chip or other non-credstick storage device outside of certain purely internal bank procedures would be hideously illegal. Any nuyen not in a bank account or certified credstick would automatically send up a red flag as counterfeit or stolen to whoever you're transferring the nuyen to. A fixer might not care if your nuyen is coming off a Mitsuhama bank chip, but he'll scan it to make sure you aren't scamming him.


Pretty much. Each nuyen is little more than a long encrypted number or statement with a unique serial number.


You can track every nuyen. When a transaction occurs, your bank and the bank of the store/company/person you're dealing with make a note of it and register the transferal. So there are records with the sending bank and the receiving bank, plus whatever other authority keeps track of transactions of that nature (if any), though probably individual serial numbers might not be kept track of in that case.


To get from Bank #1 to Bank #2 requires some transaction to take place, and there has to be a record of that transaction, or it's obvious something weird and illegal happened, because Bank #1 still has a record of all transactions with that nuyen and if it doesn't have a record of sending it to Bank #2 (or to somebody that sent it to somebody that sent it to Bank #2, etc.), that's a red flag.

Really, stealing nuyen requires you to either disguise it as a legal transaction, or launder the money. Unless it's certified cred, where the physical possessor owns it.


The actual files can't be altered (except for being forged) while on the credstick, so in that sense they can't be marked as stolen, but corporate and government agencies can create lists of "stolen" or "marker" serial numbers for various purposes, and check all their transactions against them (doesn't take but a nanosecond). The agencies looking for it will eventually run across the nuyen and can trace its transaction history until they either hit a wall (money laundering; politics) or the point where it was transferred off the credstick. Of course, even then there's no guarantee that the criminal will be caught, since possession of a certified credstick in and of itself is neither a crime or proof of criminal activity - but it can be substantial evidence of such, in corroboration with other proof.


Escrow accounts get around this; it's pretty hard to prove someone "stole" an escrow account, and as I pointed out above setting out flags for certified credsticks isn't a real winner, though it can help Mr. J track the runners and gain information about their spending habits and lives for later use and abuse.


You don't explicitly need a bank for a certified credstick; it's implicit that you're transferring nuyen from your bank account to the certified credstick you purchased (the cost of the credstick is probably the bank's transaction fee).

Awesome, thanks for taking the time to answer Ancient.

I'm still a bit confused about something. Say I get a certified credstick from a bank for 5000 nuyen. I believe that it cost me 5500 total. Can I choose to transfer more money to it without involving the bank (and incuring more fees)? Say from my offshore account to the credstick? And is there a limit of 5000 nuyen the the stick can hold?

I was always under the impression that you could not directly transfer money to a credstick yourself, only the bank could transfer nuyen to it. For the most part, you could only take nuyen out of credstick. Is this right?

Also, after the bank creates the certified credstick does the bank have anything else to do with the funds on that stick or is it totally out of the system?

Huh, well that's silly. (Please note, I am in no way saying that anyone is wrong about anything ) Why would they transfer the actual files to a cert credstick? Isn't that just ASKING for trouble? Also, wouldn't it be alot easier to make certified credsticks work like those Visa gift card things? Basically, it's the same as a bank account, but it has a specific amount of money in it and it's not registered to anyone so anyone who is holding it can use it. I wonder why they went out of their way to make certified cerdsticks (a little bit) forgeable. Certified credsticks using a completely different transaction method than other ones is very strange.

Also, (unless they don't use it at all in 4e) there's always physical money that can be (still hard to do) forged. But that's off topic.

Since the topis IS digital currency... Can you pay like... a street thug with 10Y from a certified stick (with 5K on it)? How's that work? We've always just handwaved it and had money able to work when it needed to.

Simple: Don't. Go. There.

It'll only cause you pain. Especially given the weak cryptography of SR4.

It works by definition. Somehow.
Or rather, it doesn't, see Spoofing Life.
But no-one talks about it. Like the elefant in the room. Or credit cards.

Actually, that's 5k + the cost of the credstick (25 ). The convenience fee depends on how impolite your GM is feeling.


An offshore account, by definition, would involve some sort of banking entity. Pretty much any transfer of funds to or from a credstick involves a bank, unless you're physically handing the thing over, which is the entire point.


Depends on the type, see the Certified Credstick Table.


No such limitation is ever given, so no. Frankly, it's your cred, you can do what you want with it.


The bank undoubtedly keeps a record of the transaction and what nuyen were downloaded in the credstick, which someone following the money trail can find later, but aside from that they're pretty well out of it.


Whenever you insist on a degree on anonymity in financial transactions, you're encouraging trouble, but it's a service that remains in demand.


Different animal. The money in the gift card's account is still being held by a bank or credit card company, and that company registers all transactions and maintains total control of the cash. If that company suspects wrongdoing, they can actually stop you from accessing the funds at any time. A credstick, by comparison, is as close as cash-in-hand as you get with electronic currencies.

(I could go into the nature of credit and inflation and how your gift card might not actually be dealing with "real money," but that's a minor point.)


One part retromancy, to start with. Holdover from previous editions. The entire concept of certified credsticks is essentially to replicate the anonymous nature of physical currency ownership.

For example, let's say you find a hundred dollar bill on the sidewalk. You pick it up. As far as anyone is concerned, that cash is yours, right? Who can prove otherwise? Well, if some mad old millionaire wrote down all the serial numbers of all his hundred dollar bills he could contest it, but that's probably not going to stop you from going into the nearest convenience store and buying a pack of oat bran muffins and a tall boy.

A certified credstick works pretty much the same way. If you scavenge it off of Mr Johnson's corpse, it's yours. Since cash has gone the way of the dodo, this is pretty much the only way to handle such post-mortem transactions.


Said street thug would need some sort of account, which essentially means they need a commlink (and no, being a technomancer doesn't count, unless you want to show me where the credstick port is).

We're not even going there XD


EDIT: I decided I should actually post more than that. You made very good points. I suppose I wasn't thinking of it as Digital Cash, since you still can't really give part of it away without some intermediary device. Is there any other form of currency used, or any kind of (quasi)established bartering system that the poor use? I mean, it's gotta be pretty rough to do anything without the possibility of having money. Or rather, is it just that there is a higher usage of certified credsticks in the 70's than I'm assuming?

Yup...forget where I just read it...either Unwired or Runner Havens, but bartering is still widely used in the barrens. Cash is rare, but can still be found and is sometimes accepted.

In my games, when using credsticks transactions, they are either given as a whole (and verified via commlink as to the amount) or plugged into a commlink and transferred to a bank account (via commlink). If you don't have a commlink, I'd be wary of trusting any sort of digital currency...

We haven't gone into it in great detail, but there are degrees of poverty. Even if you can't afford even the cheapest commlink, you could still potentially have a bank account - it's just accessing and using it that would be troublesome and awkward, as you'd have to use public terminals or have someone manually type in your account number and authorize the funds transfer. The SINless don't have a proper ID to authorize any sort of transfer, and would have to rely on biometrics and/or some sort of passcode for each transaction - if they can get an account in the first place, which may well be illegal or at least extremely shady.

Of course, people without any credit accounts at all are in a real jam, because that makes getting any money nearly impossible. They're stuck with barter, or physical currency if they can get it (and are then stuck dealing with places that deal with hard cred). This is pretty close to the state of the homeless today, except in that case even begging is not a seriously viable option because they have nowhere for funds to be transferred to and no way to access it even if they were. It's a hard knock life, chummer.

I find hard currency in Shadowrun interesting. Sometimes its portrayed as viable and sometimes its not. A fixer in the Denver Missions carries hard currency to hand out to the needy. Yet, one has to wonder how useful the paper would be in some situations. Or at least how devalued.

As for Barter, some of us really like barter. Even out of game.

BlueMax

Money isn't a physical object anymore. (Unless it's corp scrip).

It's a record of that money.

When it moves, there's a record of it moving.

Imagine when you go shopping you show up with your bank statement, no Cash.
You select something to buy.
The vendor asks you for the money for the product.
You say, here, I have money.
The Vendor says, "How do I really know that's your account?"
You say, "I have the access codes, I can verify it's my money."
Vendor says, "Okay transfer it to me."
You say, "Ok", and you access your account, verify your identity, authorize the transfer to the vendors account.
The Vendor checks his account, and sees that the money was transferred.
You get the goods.

You have a record of that money moving between accounts
The vendor has the record of the money moving
The Bank also has records of the money moving between accounts.

Periodically the bank, the vendor, and you all reconcile those accounts to make sure it all adds up correctly.

That's the simplistic model. In practice, in addition to the three parties involved directly, there's going to be records of the transaction on every intermediate carrier on both the pure data, and any other intermediate service required to enable the transaction.

Certified Credsticks are simply accounts which only require authentication not tied to a specific identity. It still ends up going through the same set of transfer procedures. The reason you can't track an individual through a credstick is because while you can track a specific unit of currency, as soon as a transaction occurs, you can no longer be certain the unit of currency belongs to a certain individual. Imagine a dollar bill with a tracking device. You could always know where it is, but you can't tell who has it without using some other source of information.

Ok, so after checking SR3 I see that certified credsticks have changed a bit. You no longer need authentication do you? You use to be able to password protect some. The better ones had print, retinal and even cellular identification. And they don't seem to have an unlimited version either; max is 1 million now. Can you password protect certified credsticks now?

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I can tranfer funds between credsticks now, can't I? So if I have four of them with a few nuyen a piece I can move all funds to one stick? Without bank intervention, right? I'd probably need a commlink to facilitate the transfer though.

@DireRadiant
From the way I understood it, most people never actually touch their money; it's all in cred accounts. The exception is when you pull it out of those accounts via a credstick. A credstick actually holds the digitally signed nuyen. Thats why forgers need access to certified credsticks. I'm also under the impression that if the credstick is destroyed so is the nuyen.

Digitally signed is still authenticated. It just uses codes instead of biometric data. The digital signature is still authenticated against another system.

When you log into Dumpshock, there is nothing that checks that the person behind the "Ayeohx" screen name is really the person who created the account, it's allows anyone who knows the account name and password to login and post. This is how a credstick basically works.

When you go to the bank and withdraw cash, you offer a signature as authentication that it is really you withdrawing the money. This is what happens with the commlink transfer, you use the SIN verification to show it is you, and then you give the account and login to make the money transfer.

There's actually lots of authentication going on in your basic commlink transfer. The user is authenticating who they are against a SIN system, each account is authenticating itself, proving they are real accounts, and then the transaction requests and processing and verification steps are all authenticated as well as all the data transportation and communications. The one that is not used in a credstick is the one requiring a personal identity to use the money account.

Even if there is a "file" on the certified credstick digitally signed, it still must be recorded as a transaction in the debiting account and the crediting accounts, which are not on the certififed credstick.

Oh. Oh no. It's back. Crap.

Unless there's something in SR4A on the matter it's pretty much up to GMs. Is the cash an encrypted file, is the local data just for verification of identity, is it hardcoded to the comm, is it a PSK variant blah, blah, blah.


There's dozens of ways ecash could work IRL and a bajillion for the not-based-on-reality SRverse. Decide on one and move along.

I recommend simplicity and waiving away questions about details, much as you would about magic.

IMO a good way for GMs to deal with the theft racket is to have the hacker break into the patsy's comm and/or traffic and get enough successes on an Analyze test that they can Spoof the network to look like patsy and buy stuff on his dime. You then hock/barter the stuff for what you really want.

This let's hackers easily cadge dinner, drinks, and gas money from nearby patrons and pick up spare cash hocking stuff but for real cash they need to find a ritzy type with a high credit limit. The problem then is surviving their wrath since anybody with enough free credit to buy a car on a passphrase can afford to hire 'runners.

Ignore the details of certifies cred the same way. As per RAW certified credsticks can be forged if you have an original. The forgeries will work if you suceeded on your forgery check. But the system will flag every version of that stick as a forgery once conflicting versions are identified. Meaning a 5000Y stick is copied 3 times and used to pay 4 different people. Each comes up as legit as long as no one taps the funds. But if PersonA pulls 100Y ou to buy sushi on Tuesday, when PersonD tries to buy tires on Thursday the bank system screams bloody murder. If you don't want the forgeries to be detected immediately, the banking systems have to get more successes than the forger, make it a cumulative thing as the banks will share data. Eventually those forged sticks will be caught. If not and all the forgered nuyen are successfully spent, the hacker got lucky and fell through the cracks.

You need to push the "I believe" button. The weak cryptography BS combined with the "Certified credsticks" BS that are by cannon untraceable are mutually exclusive BS that will cause cancer if you think too much about it. Without pushing the "I Believe" button you can logically show that 12 year old hackers just make their own nuyen and nobody can do anything about it. At that point, why are you doing anything for money in this game?

Ladies and gentlemen... we have a winner.

- J.

First,
Let me say that I agree completely. Applause to this great post.
Second,
We need an Icon we can put into any thread that gets caught in a similar trap.

Lastly,
12 Year old hackers? but the game has a mechanism built in for Free Sprites to do so.

BlueMax

That's probybly the reason why you can play Free Spirits and AIs, but not Free Sprites.

Think of digital nuyen as being a file that contains it's entire history back to exactly which atoms of gold it's backed by. Forging nuyen means forging the decades long paper trail.

Leave it at that and push the "I believe" button. Credsticks erase the paper trail (except what atoms of gold back the cash), which allows for untraceable transactions (when nuyen leaves the credstick it keeps a note of which credstick it came from and who the owner was--credsticks are based on DNA: whoever last held the stick is the legal owner of all the cash stored in it, and it can't be transferred anywhere except that person's account and vice versa).

Just don't ask how come you can't spoof a credstick.

<sigh> We're off the gold standard, mate. Have been for a while. Also: no, the nuyen does not contain a history of each transaction it's been through.

There was a Free Spirit Power to create valuable Goods in SR3. So... yeah.

So, its a fiat currency is it?
Even more reason I believe in barter.

Draco, its not even money its currency!
Possibly obscure

BlueMax
/in a hackable world
//digital fiat
/// slams easy button

I must admit to the sheer stupidity of the nuyen "on the stick" concept, anybody with an inkling of economic thought in the head realizes that the developers are trying to introduce "hard cash" in electronic form and somewhat failing the "think it through" test.

I too envision the credstick as a "link" to a very limited account rather then actual... cash. Even crappy SR encryption is not an issue if the sticks contain an extremely large one time pad which a section of which is used to authorise the transfer.

As for the traceability, that is easily dealt with with some logical thought.

Every corp, particularly AAA, sometimes needs to move money silently and without tracing, even within themselves. It is deep in the Corporate Councils interest to facilitate this. It is acceptable and indeed logical to assume the the credstick systems are held to be not touched by CC decree, perhaps even as each system is implemented a "key" is passed to each member. Tracing transactions "within" the Credstick system would only be viable with the agreement of all members of the council.

Lets face it, if an omega order has been pulled on you, credstick traceability is one of the least of your problems

It's also even more really desirable to PREVENT this, as this is what is called embezzlement. Untraceable transfers of funds where you can't determine why it was done or where it went to and that can't be audited.

If you want to do this you can just do this in any number of ways, as the fundamental requirement is that the incoming cash doesn't make it onto the books. Electronic funds are actually much worse than other approaches, as they will create a record. If Ares Small Arms wants to transfer a million nuyen to Ares Space without it being obvious they would be better off arranging for Joe's fueling to deliver 600,000 gallons of AV gas to their tank farm and Joe only billing them for 5000 gallons then sending them a million nuyen transfer.

If you try to explain this you get brain cancer and die, so don't.

And if you have OTP on cred sticks by god why don't you have them every where else.

Yes open transactions prevent embezzlement, so surely even today we have open transactions . Wait we're having a economic crisis, how did that happen? Swiss bank accounts exists for a reason and they are not going away.

Lets put in another way, it is best to be "seen" to embrace openness. But "you" CEO, or otherwise can make more money then that. The CC is not an entity based on the betterment of mankind. It's based on greed. And "greed" always requires a way to hide it.

Your second point is a lot more powerful but I still maintain sometimes that your method is not universally applicable. Non traceable cash has an appreciable use for those in power, thus even in a world where currency is completely virtual some method of duplicating that ability would be agreed upon.

Now excuse me I have an MRI appointment for the brain cancer

Oh and the comment on OTP.... That way lies madness. I've always hated Encryption in SR.

Actually swiss bank accounts are slowly but surely going away. Now the swiss can be forced to reveal ownership details and transaction histories, and you must supply complete personal details when openning an account, which was previously not required.

This is why all my income is invested in blow.

BlueMax
/invested?
//spent?
///you pick

You should look up a definition of embezzlement. I don't think that words means what you think it means.

Yes they are. UBS is closing US citizen's accounts under pressure from the IRS/USG and only paying them out in checks to the customer's US address or electronic fund transfers to a US bank. You know why? Because the IRS loves EFTs and is extremely fond of checks. They provide a trail that you can't cover up and is easy to audit.

Why couldn't it? If file size means nothing in SR the nuyen file could contain an incredible amount of information, right? Transfer of said nuyen to a certified account would just create a gap in the data trail, but there might be some nuyen that are tracked from creation to... well, infinity. Not arguing your point really. Just saying that SR tech would support this so why is it not so?

1) It would negate half the point of credsticks
2) We don't track file sizes because a) it's more bookkeeping than it's worth and b) we don't look quite as ridiculous when things continue to advance past the sizes we made up last year
3) Each nuyen would then have a different file size because they would go through different numbers of changes
4) And they would be /big/ files, because a single nuyen can easily go through a billion transactions in a day
5) It makes more sense for the records to be stored elsewhere so that they can be checked and cross-correlated more easily; otherwise we'd have runs where you have to find a specific nuyen just so someone could extract the transaction log.

I do not deny that Ancient knows what he/she is talking about; Ancient has been around. And as a corporation I would make damn sure that nuyen does not retain a full log of where its been. Corporations like to do shady and nuyen having a complete history of where its been would screw them. Hell, they'd find a different currency to traffic in.

But, there is this little tidbit from Unwired:
"However, data in 2070 is not only data. It carries extensive
meta-information of various kinds. The complete history of editors,
generators, programs, dates, and versions of programs used,
connections to other pieces of data like their location, search terms
used to find the data, and much more is stored. Most of the time,
the meta-information is larger than the data itself. This information
is especially important for data mining purposes, searches,
and bookkeeping. The amount of data available in 2070 is so vast
that finding a particular piece of data and getting its context is
often as important as the information content itself."

Apparently normal data stores a history of EVERYTHING that happens to it. Nuyen can definately be an exception to this, and until I hear an official statement say otherwise, the only metainfo that nuyen has is the digital signature. And certainly not any transaction history. Who'd ever use that currency?

Better yet, who would use a fiat currency in a chaotic world?

Alan Greenspan of all people.

I would imagine the rich and powerful in Shadowrun are smart. And would posses real wealth and not rely to any useful extent on fiat currency.

BlueMax
/invest in blow
// from the Drug traffickers
// or if you want to be pretentious, narcotraficantes

I think I understand what you mean BlueMax and I believe that corps have their tangible wealth. But its the seemingly small things, such as paying a black ops team, which forces them in dealing with an untraceable currency. For the last few decades my runners have been paid with nuyen on certified credsticks because it suppose to be untraceable. I'd like to know why its untraceable.

Because it is so written. Thinking deeply about this, after the urge to throw yourself off a high building passes, will lead to an nearly irresistible urge to rewrite a couple of chapters of the core rules.

BlueMax: What is that from? Looks like it would be an interesting read....

An Essay he wrote called
"Gold and Economic Freedom".

BlueMax

Cool thanks. I found the entire essay here if anyone else is interested.

Instead of trying to understand a technology that hasn't been invented, I find something simple for an explanation. We really don't know how the cybertechnology works, although, there are some pretty impressive prototypes. And the whole unwired world is "plausible" because we see wireless connections, but we DON'T see the global connectivity of Shadowrun. And, let us not ponder the actual 'reality' of magic. Remember, untraceable currency can be plausible, but when put under a microscope, it becomes less tangible.

The best 'answer' I offer is, there is so much at stake that the Corporate Courts (or whoever) created a system that works. Think of the Y2K thing. The only people who really had anything to worry about also had the resources to fix the problems before it became a problem. Maybe there is a specific type of technology that works with very limited types of information and the transactions required for digital currency. Nuyen isn't really "just another piece of information". It is the support for a global economy.

You could have your shadowrunners do some runs that give hints as to what nuyen is, and how it really works (without ever giving the whole answer), then have them notice that the corporation ankles they are dancing around are starting to tremble. When power like that quakes, they should keep their heads down. It will give them the idea that nuyen isn't as simple and stable as everyone (in or out of game) thinks, but stops the players from looking too hard. I mean, it is one thing to get the attention of a megacorp (massive resources with very little to stop them), but if the Corporate Courts have your name, that is a whole different story.

Thanks gang, I think I've got all the info I need. This is how I'm calling it in my campaign:

• Nuyen can only be stored in banks and on credsticks; not on commlinks or any other devices.
• Money can be transferred into and out of a credstick (up to the credsticks max) by a user without bank intervention.
• After a bank issues a credstick they no longer interact with or track the funds.
• All nuyen on a credstick actually resides on the credstick, not in a credit account.
• Since nuyen has a digital signature it can be tracked but there probably is no system that can wait and watch for it to be spent.
• Stolen nuyen may eventually be traced though so if you spend stolen nuyen at the same store every day there is a slight chance that you can be caught.
• Moving nuyen out of a credit account requires a password; possibly even some form of biometrics.
• Some idiots may store their credit account passwords on their commlinks; steal that file!

And that makes it highly ironic that its the same guy that was boss of the federal reserve when USA ended their use of the gold standard...

Sadly it seems that without some kind of physical good backing paper and accounts, its in continual free fall...

I was willing to leave this alone. I mean, there's one Gold Standardist on every forum and you're never going to see them give up their ways. You start posting articles supporting your insane point of view and trying to evangelise? Then I am compelled to come in and post the opposing viewpoint.

Look, I'm not up to this. I don't have the time, for a start. The Gaming Den had a thread on this where they even discuss Alan Greenspan. Please avail yourself of this discussion, it might help you to understand things.


By the way, Alan Greenspan's article that has been linked to? From the sixties. He's less crazy these days (like most modern politicians).

Heath,
I don't advocate a gold standard in real life. I think you assume, and it has most certainly made an ass out of me. The concern here is Shadowrun. I would love for you to find the time to post a view on why fiat currency would be useful in Shadowrun.
My concern about nuyen is its backing. Fiat currency is backed by a government. Shadowrun is a tumultuous world. Which government declared the nuyen legal tender? How do they enforce it?
If the Corp Council exercised more "World Government" influence, I could see the Council managing Nuyen. The massive legal and financial backing of Interpol in Ghost Cartels could be considered a start in that direction.
Would have sucked to have a bunch of rial when Aden woke up.
Or any pesos.
Or any US dollars.
Or any Canadian Dollars.
Or , should the nuyen be backed by Japan, any Nuyen. Occupations, giant earthquakes, and shaky power transfers are not nice to fiat currency.
I could go on...

But, I am looking for an answer for Shadowrun. I keep thinking this bored is about Shadowrun, am I wrong?

BlueMax

Iirc, nuyen is supposedly backed by the stock value of the corps whos representatives sit on the corp court...

oh, stocks in a basket. Kinda neat.
How do I buy shares in S-K again?

That would make sense if a third party regulated said stock market.
Its not like Shadowrun has stories of market manipulation... ohh wait.

According to the Sixth World Wiki


It may be out of date but if true, the currency at least has a government. And I guess it could be enforced through the Japanese Megas like Yamatetsu.

I should declare this now, when it comes to Shadowrun I am for the Ammo Standard.
APDS are dollars
EXEX are quarters
SNS are two dollars
Standard ammo is pennies.

BlueMax
/just got bought out
//in a Nanosecond
///and is very Cross

You can do that in Feral Chicago.

As soon as I have a Critters book for Fourth Ed, you bet your hoop I am running Feral Chicago.

BlueMax

I wish the original creator of that nuyen article had included a book and page reference...

And sadly i cant dig up where i read about the nuyen base, tho i suspect its close to a description of the orbital bank...

Ah, it seems corporate enclaves holds something interesting on page 58, specifically the timeline sidebar.

In 2036 japan grants zurich-orbital policy control over the nuyen. So while it starts out as japanese state currency, by 2036 it becomes the world courrency, controlled by the bank in the sky rather then the japanese national bank...

If it makes anyone feel any better, as a young freelancer I advocated the introduction of a currency based on the orichalcum standard, tentatively called Wuxbux (Ω) because a) I am horrible with names and b) the issuing institution was going to be based on the Snowdonian National Bank and Wuxing-Debeers' tonnage of natural orichalcum. The idea was that no matter what the current price of orichalcum in nuyen (which can fluctuate, as was seen during YotC), 1Ω could always be redeemed for 1 grain (10 grams) of orichalcum.

Fortunately, reason prevailed.

For a start, all the Megas accept Nuyen. It is probably in the contracts they sign when they become members of the CC (and you have to accept that they sign contracts when they become members). The Megas are organisations you can buy pretty much any product on the planet from. You can use Nuyen, therefore, to satisfy almost every need that exists. If that isn't enough to support the Nuyen in your opinion, then no mere Government is.

If the most powerful economic, political and social entities in the game world aren't enough to float a currency then I wonder if we're playing the same game at all. What fiat is stronger than massive transglobal corporations that manipulate entire continents? Am I to believe a body that is constrained to a powerbase with an area less than the size of the Chinese Empire at its height is more powerful?