@jakub I think my poll is broken. No one is voting. GO VOTE.
@Ricardus Whatever happened to the Sol?
For a long time, up through about the 1980s, it was a standard currency in science fiction stories.
Was there a market crash? A depression? Did the exchange rate against Federation Credits sink so low it became like the Ecuadorian sucre, which was officially abandoned in favor of US dollars? (The exchange was about 20,000 sucres to the dollar when it was abandoned.)
@Karen5Lund I only get 4 fields max.
@Ricardus A disappointingly practical answer, but incontrovertibly accurate.
@Karen5Lund This is a fair question, and we have actually discussed things like this at Cons. We specifically has a panel on economics in the federation. This may have been discussed.
@Ricardus I used to find it strange that so many science fiction novels had adopted the same name for future currency.
As for the Ecuadorian sucre, I visited a friend who was working with Peace Corps in 1994 and the sucre was 2,200 to the dollar. We used 2,000 to make the math easier. I had enough trouble translating large numbers between Spanish and English.
To make matters worse, the largest bill was 10,000 sucres, a little less than $5, and most stores didn't take credit cards.
@Karen5Lund I almost married a woman from Colombia (no not a mail order bride) and I visited her family in South American and there was about 2000 colombian pesos to the US dollar. I remember we went to a mall, and it cost money to park, and the attendant asked for 500 pesos and I was like WTF?!
This was before I knew the exchange rate.
Rai is real money y'all don't be fooled
@Ricardus
The Fleenian Pobblebead is only exchangeable for other Fleenian Pobblebeads.