There were some experiments where currency was actually denominated in hours, usually as part of a co-op system where you were literally trading for hours of labour.

I think the most famous one was in Ithaca, NY.

Can't do that because hours are gods.

I think it's a clever metaphor for the disparity in living standards and the real value of human life in a corrupt marketplace.

But the actual implementation of the story was a bit clumsy and heavy handed.

In Time is definitely one of my favorite movies. It has some great world building around this concept.

Yeah it also has a rather large plot hole, right at the climax, and kind of terrible CGI, the car crash scene is hilariously bad. But yeah it's quite a good film from a story point of view.

I read that comics (Mandrake) when I was a kid, like in the seventies. Alien came and stole for 40.000 years of gold. Recycle ftw eh.

We're literally living that life and we've always lived it since the dawn of currency, fiat.

How long you're going to survive after you reach zero wealth left to your own devices, homeless on the streets? Until the first rough winter?

Also, depending on where and when in the middle ages, currency would vary hugely and work with several dozens of different coins. Travel to another region would involve money changers, scales, entirely different systems of coinage with (by modern standards) absurd breakdowns of coins and wholly new names and words.

And having pure coins would be easy, so obviously you'd have fun stuff like "new dollars" being worth 7/16th of an "old dollar" because they have less silver in them.

I don't see the problem with that balance. You shouldn't be hoarding cheese as an adventurer for healing or for selling. Something like a potion should be used for healing and should be appropriately expensive.

That said, I agree gameplay is more important and economic simulation, I just don't think the example was the best. It's already off that in games like Skyrim we collect random trinkets until we can't carry anything else and sell it all to any random shop keeper. It's weird and, to be honest, not actually fun. (Mildly hot take.) Finding and selling things that are actually rare is fine. Like weapons, gems, etc.

Because as an adventurer you're not a peasant. You're an adventurer. It's a high risk high reward profession that's difficult to get into.

Expect a mod fork to change it to piss lol

The problem with using water as currency is that it is heavy. It is not reasonable to carry around large amounts. You'll need some kind of representational currency.

is there a physics limit to the density of energy

the physics limit to the density of energy is literally a black hole. it compresses the maximum amount of mass (energy) into a space. but that's technologically useless since you can't extract the energy out of it on-demand.

The densest ways of storing energy that are technologically useful are:

• batteries (Na-Ion batteries: 0.2 kWh/kg)
• oil/carbon-based fuels (bread: 5 kWh/kg)
• uranium (pure uranium: 24 * 10^6 kWh/kg)

There's also speculative technologies like antimatter (24 * 10^9 kWh/kg) which aren't available today.

Source

[...] why not have a watch sized device that can store insane amounts of power?

Because Hiroshima was leveled by "only" 20 MWh (cost ranges from 120€ in northern Scandinavia to 1010€ in Greece) so having people carry energy wallets with enough to make more around day to day is like paying your groceries bill with C4 (which is perfectly save as long as there is no primary explosive).

Stellaris is a space 4x game that uses energy as a universal currency. The Endless Space games are also 4x games that use ancient nanomachines called Dust as currency.

And yes, concentrating energy increases mass. E=MC^2, which means more Energy must necessarily mean more Mass. So basically gravity will be your hard limit, theoretically stuffing enough energy into small enough a place will create a black hole, though I assume if you're talking electricity then there's probably some physical limit you would hit first.

We have technological limits to the storage efficiencies of different types of batteries. Batteries defined as something that can store useable energy. If we are talking just energy, matter "stores" lots of energy, and you can look at the famous Einstein equation to play with numbers. I do know we have something like a matter density limit in black holes.

Matter, expressed in mass, so kilograms or tons.

But are your legs OK?

Spacebukz

the why did the wealthiest man in town give all his fortune for a single apple?

I read it was illegal for peasants to own gold or silver, maybe just in some place somewhere...

But yeah, gold is ridiculously expensive.

Metro series games use bullets as a currency. Theyre small, not easily produceable in the setting, and have inherent value (you can shoot your money at enemies). Great design.

Could swear I've seen a setting where the currency was sovereigns, but there was no king. Literally "cash is king".

You can also get weird with it. Brandon Sanderson likes to tie money to a world's magic system so in the world where people have metal based magic it's coins called clips and boxings, but in the world where hurricanes make gemstones glow with magic it's spheres of glass with gems called chips, marks, and broams

In reverend insanity "money" was basically just "mana potions."