Cash in Traveller

[RainOfSteel]

Originally posted by Frank Mikes:
RainofSteel suggests [...] criminals started ditching the weapons; etc. Counterfeiting and fraud are more rife today despite greater safeguards!

That is why I did not say "impossible".

An engineering geek (Computer, Electronics) working on the problem from scratch isn't going to find the solution that easily.

A criminal who has been taught how already (Forgery, maybe Streetwise). High skill levels would be favorable to achieving a possible success.

The more you commit the crime, though, the more data on it catches up with you.

This of course goes off into the possibilities of how criminals avoid detection in a super high tech society, but that's way off-topic.

 

[archhealer]

A note about credit cards/debit cards/cash cards:

IMTU, the Travellers Aid Society at each of their centers (Usually only on A or B starports, but sometimes C and rarely D), offers credit exchange facilities. This charges a card for you, or puts your credits into an account accessible with a debit card. The catch? It only works on-planet, and they usually have a short-term expiration date (A few weeks or a month). They are meant for use by travellers and traders, and it's assumed that long-term accounts would be held primarily by planetary banks.

 

[aramis]

In my life I've seen less than a dozen notes that I could tell were forged, several of them so good that only the currency checking pen revealed them.

I've known 30 people who have committed electronic currency frauds, and 28 have been caught. 29 & 30 said they were leaving the country... on tickets purchased with monies transferred illegally to various e-funding sites, then consolidated on Ebay into their valid accounts.

E-currency is far easier to embezzle, to forge, to steal. And I've suffered from corporate theft-by-deception, too...

So when people claim E-monies are safer, I laugh. Emonies are only as secure as the least secure transaction on the account or between the provider's hardware.

Cash at least requires a significant investment to forge, and physical access to steal. It's also significantly harder for the government to track cash (currency and coin).

I can see local worlds requiring on-world e-currency at TL6+ with LL 7+

But IMTU, as with the OTU, as laid out in The Traveller Adventure, Imperial Currency is colorful foldable plastic sheeting at 0.2mm/bill.. IMTU, the denomination is also electronically checkable due to embedded conductors functioning in a manner not dissimilar to the punchcards of TL5&6.

 

[parmasson]

Perhaps the Emperor can be seen waving at you in a little annoying animated gif? Hey it is high tech right?
Heheheheh….

 

[Black Globe Generator]

Originally posted by Kurega Gikur:
Perhaps the Emperor can be seen waving at you in a little annoying animated gif?

Excellent!

 

[Lochlaber]

IMTU there is cash, the Imperial Credit and hard goods (which includes gems, precious metals, etc.). Most Imperial credits are handled electronically for the simple fact it is easier for commercial transactions because of the ease, just like it is today. Sinc it is their money involved, most corporations are highly involved in keeping the system honest and report any flukes that might be a problem to the Imperium (again because their money is involved).

To make it easier for me and because we stayed within 3 sectors of the core, we invented what we called trade items. These are simply gold coins that have an imperial value of 8 million credits per ton but cannot be used as cargo, similar operations with gemstones. Basically if we sell more cargo than the locals can pay for and after we subtract what we buy, we get these items in exchange. Occasionally I have used the local currency problems to keep my players on their toes, I don't generally worry about it. Of course sometimes I end up buying loads of stuff that I can't use or investing in a planet I might never return to but generally if my money is there, I make a trip every other year.

 

[Laryssa]

Electronic credits are easier to fake than precious metals. No matter what the precautions there is always a way to hack into electronic cards and alter the information within.

My rule is that electronic money is local. If someone wants to move money from one system to another, then he buys coins and transports them to another system and then he sells them for the local electronic credits. In my universe the real currency are silver coins, the electronic credits are simply bank accounts to keep track of them. When someone buys something with his debit card, then the bank moves silver coins from one bin to another. If you got alot of money you buy plantinum or irridium. The electronic credit is simply a bank's accounting system, the government doesn't really care about these things, to then the credit is simply defined as a certain amount of silver, and the bank simply manufactures its own currency to keep track of the silver in its vaults. Preventing counterfeiting is partially the banks responsibility, counterfeiting is illegal and the government will arrest anyone who does it, but the task of making counterfeiting difficult falls to the banks that issue the credit.

 

[Border Reiver]

Forging of precious metal coins has been around for thousands of years. Gold was adopted as coinage in preference to silver as it is more durable and harder to counterfeit.

But economically metal standards are a dodgy issue. They make nations subject to poverty if they deplete their reserves, recessionsin metal standard states bite harder, markets become slow to react to variances and lines of credit are difficult to set up or maintain. Look at the economy of San Francisco in the mid 19th century for the chaos involved in metal currency.

This is not to say that metal standards or asset standards are unworkable just that they do not stimulate economies. The Islamic world has been trying to set up an International Gold Currency for years (the Dinar, about 4g of pure gold) for trade between Islamic states that is not subject to debt backing - interest is illegal in Islam.

IMTU I stick with the OTU version of cash and have local curencies abound. e-transfers are the domain of the IISS and areas off the x-boat routes are subject to fraud, theft and barratry in the transfer of funds, all of which is semi-legal.

 

[Border Reiver]

But then again, big gold and silver coins do look and feel good. For a science fiction setting why not?

What other metals could be used?

 

[TheEngineer]

Any metal, which are expected to be somehow rare

Well, theoretically those metals could be created in particle accelarators or e.g. by shooting neutrons on a Hg target in order to produce gold.
Even if this is very inefficient (ragarding production rates and cost) this might be different in the Traveller future, where energy costs nearly nothing and additional fictional devices like nuclear dampers could change reaction rates.
Anyway a "gold machine" would be a pretty cool adventure topic.

On the other hand there might be significant higher amounts of gold in other star systems.
Generally I could still think of gold or other rare metals as local currencies, but perhaps not as an interstellar, imperial one

 

[Laryssa]

The fact that is costs energy to make gold makes it less tempting to counterfeit currency that way. Even in the Traveller Universe, its probably less expensive to print counterfeit currency that's based on its information rather than to manufacture currency based on its content. If someone makes a counterfeit coin out of real gold, who cares, just so long as it has the gold content, that is all that matters. In order for manufacturing gold to be viable, it must be cheaper than any other viable source such as from mining. Another precious metal that could be used is Iridium. if someone comes from another system with a cloned credit card, who's to know? <ost people would only trust credit cards issued locally where they can be verified. Paper money is the same deal, space is vast, who knows where a counterfeiting operation could be taking place, Imperial credit bills may be hard to counterfeit, but if you could crack one bill, you could churn out a whole bunch of them at very little additional cost. If you can make one bogus Imperial Credit, you can make a million. Manufactuing 1 million tons of gold costs one million times as much just to make one ton. Knowledge of how to make goald doesn't mean that its cheap. I would suspect it would by much easier to manufacture diamonds as that doesn't involve transmutation of elements.

 

[princelian]

I'm coverin' up my head!

Gold-pressed latinum?

I'm still coverin' up my head!

 

[Border Reiver]

Forgers never "manufactured" gold. They make cheap imitations. Gold plated lead coins instead of solid gold, shiny silvery alloys instead of silver. The counterfeiters aren't trying to get these past banks or Ministry of Justice agents, just the average cash register. That is why counterfeit coins even today are distributed through pubs and clubs. "I'll give you a hundred Cr1 coins for a Cr20 note" is a typical deal. Promises that they can fool slot machines are an advantage, but they feed right through the system usually undetected.

Travellers would make excellent cover for an economic sabotage team, lots of fake cash spread about startown and then on to the next port.

 

[Black Globe Generator]

Originally posted by Laryssa:
If someone makes a counterfeit coin out of real gold, who cares, just so long as it has the gold content, that is all that matters.

That's true of bullion, but not of most coinage, which tends to be worth more than the value of its materials and fluctuates with the currency market rather than the commodities market.

I trust that materials science and graphical design in the 57th century is advanced enough to make counterfeiting at least as difficult to be lucrative as it is today.

 

[Laryssa]

A fake gold coin that is gold plated lead would have a different density than a solid gold coin. Gold is denser than lead for instance.

Here is an interesting way to tell a gold coin from a lead coin. You start with a bowl full of Mercury, and you toss in a lead coin and then a gold coin. The gold coin will sink to the bottom and the lead coin will float on top.

The density of gold is 19.32 g/cm^3.
The density of mercury is 13.534 g/cm^3.
The density of lead is 11.342 g/cm^3.

A typical merchant could have a graduated cylinder with mercury sitting on a scale with the weight of the mercury and cylinder carefully measured. When someone hands him a supposed gold coin to pay for a certain item, he tosses that coin into the cylinder, if it floats on top of the mercury, he knows its a fake coin, the then looks at the new mercury level in the cylinder to find the volume of mercury that was displaced and then he checks the scales to find the added mass, if either one of those numbers is wrong, then he knows that he was handed a fake gold coin. Ultimately, he could melt down those gold coins and seperate out the impurities, if too many impurities are found then the coin is counterfeit, he then pours the molten gold into another mold and makes a new gold coin out of it. There are ways to tell.

 

[aramis]

Interesting side note: One of the reasons the US keeps threatening to delete the penny coin is that the metal content of the Zinc is about 1.1 cents worth.

 

[mbrinkhues]

Anyone dealer messes around with Mercury to check my money is a dealer who won't see me as a customer. The stuff isn't all that healthy and I am not interested in getting coins that might have it clinging to it. Quickly makes the hand->burger->me route.

 

[ravells]

This would make an interesting article for the next issue of Stellar Reaches.

 

[princelian]

In addition, the mercury will amalgamize with the coin, at the least coating it (anyone else old enough to have made mercury pennies in science class?) and at the most dissolving it into the liquid mercury.

A much safer method is Archimedes-principle weighing, especially if you have a TL 7+ technology. You can buy a balance from Mettler-Toledo off the shelf that has the apparatus for this.

 

[rancke]

The Traveller Adventure states that Imperial credit notes are practically impossible to forge.

Something I've come up with to substitute for forgers are launderers. I assume that all CrImp notes will have RFID chips. This means that it will be trivially easy to record serial numbers, so there will be no such thing as unmarked bills any more. Run a scanner over a bag of money and you'll have a list of all the serial numbers. Only takes a few seconds. So stolen money (and ransom money) will sound the alarm as soon as you try to spend them in any place with a cash register. So someone has to reprogram the RFID chip (and change the serial number on the bill to match) before you can spend it.


Hans