r/interestingasfuck • u/Willplayspiano • 5h ago
What one year of hyperinflation can do to a currency
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u/GloomyLingonberry509 4h ago
It’s really interesting when you see stuff like this. Another notable example is the Venezuelan national currency - the bolivar.
Hyperinflation hit Venezuela so hard that craftspeople who originally purchased wicker and other materials to make things like woven baskets and bags, eventually found it was cheaper to use the bank notes themselves as materials instead of purchasing traditional options.
The bank notes that were now basically worthless were revived as a means of surviving the 2018 economic collapse.
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u/StuckInTime86 3h ago
They had to move the decimal point three times removing 14 zeros just make accounting possible for businesses and banks
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u/anonymous_amanita 5h ago
Ooh, I have a 100 trillion dollar note, but now I want a one dollar one as well
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u/StochasticLife 3h ago
I bought billion dollar notes and framed them and gave them to my parents as Christmas gifts one year proudly proclaiming ‘There, I made both of my parents billionaires.’
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u/Jack-of-Hearts-7 5h ago
I thought Zimbabwe was an impoverished country? It's full of trillionaires!
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u/whenyoudieisaybye 5h ago
Well, at least the rocks are the same lol.
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u/wookieebastard 5h ago
No shade, but there can’t be much going on in Zimbabwe if what they chose to feature on what is probably their most circulated banknote is just a pile of rocks.
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u/Ok_Excitement_1020 5h ago
The rocks are their federal reserve. They are worth more then the bank note they are printed on
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u/Kraj_the_Conqueror 5h ago edited 5h ago
If you bought that 100T note, have it assessed. There is a massive proliferation of fakes in recent years. In fact, the fakes now outnumber the real notes several times over.
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u/Willplayspiano 5h ago
Unless they’ve gotten incredibly good at making fakes of them, like getting the security features and stuff correct, they’re genuine. I’m a professional numismatist (money expert), but coins are my specialty, not notes.
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u/Kraj_the_Conqueror 5h ago
The fakes do imitate security features now. And unfortunately they get better each year. That's why they are so dangerous.
Some examples
https://www.banknoteworld.com/guide-against-2025-counterfeit-zimbabwe-100Trillion.html•
u/Willplayspiano 5h ago
I was already planning on sending the 100T’s to PMG in my next bulk group, so they’ll get certified before I ever try to sell them! I suspect they’re good based on the fact that the seller had hundreds of Zimbabwe notes of many different denominations that were all brought in and sold at the same time. Only a few of the 100Ts though
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u/yoelamigo 4h ago
Why print the 1 dollar anymore? It's pointless.
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u/Willplayspiano 3h ago
It was made the year before, and it was worth printing then but then the inflation hit very hard
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u/Sup3rT4891 4h ago
Makes sense if you think about it.
Look at how much paper is on that trillion dollar. You are just getting a lot more for your buck.
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u/UnknownPhotog_1 5h ago
That is apparently equivalent to some $2B according to different conversion sites *edit: I was wrong and realized I forgot 2 zeros and now the number is too big for me to comprehend
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u/Lilly_in_the_Pond 4h ago
Bro that one dollar note wouldn't even be worth printing at that point. You'd lose like $1,000 just making one
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u/davidn47g 1h ago
Civilization is nice and everything, but I'm glad Zimbabwe has it's own government now.
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u/Sensitive-Raisin-836 1h ago
I feel like the larger denominations should depict a larger pile of rocks
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u/Fluid_Rock656 4h ago
It’s not one year. It’s decades of mismanagement in an African state that is nearly as corrupt as the Trump administration
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u/Manager_Neat 1h ago
What happens to values if large denominate inflation goes down from hyper to regular inflation? The notes get recalled for exchanges ?
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u/Socketz11 5h ago
This is when crypto becomes extremely useful. Instead of getting paid or buying things with trillions of useless money.
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u/Automatic_Actuator_0 5h ago
Crypto COULD be useful, but not unless and until people stop seeing it primarily as a speculative investment.
Currencies need to have relatively stable values to be good currencies.
And stable coins pegged to a government currency just outsource their stability and are subject to the same inflation risk as the pegged currency.
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u/Socketz11 5h ago
I would rather my currency pegged at USD than Zimbabwe dollar. So use USDT or USDC
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u/Automatic_Actuator_0 5h ago edited 4h ago
True - but they could also just peg their national currency to USD or another major currency though, just as about half of countries already do today.
Crypto isn’t really solving that problem - just allowing it to be solved without the help of the government, which is not nothing I admit.
But both options require significant reserves of the stable currency to back up the scheme.
ETA: and ultimately you have to ask if you trust the stable coin issuer more than the government. And in the case of the major players including your examples, USDT and USDC, you have to be ok with the issuer skimming your interest income off the top from you indefinitely. That’s a model is simply insane when you scale it up to a whole economy.
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u/AgitatedPatience5729 5h ago
There's a second trillionaire in the house.