CHAPTER 555: CHAPTER 284: THE CURRENCY ISSUE

Mountain City.

"First step, produce a large amount of basic living supplies and establish a fundamental centralized trading system."

"Second step, open trade routes widely, build logistics hubs, and accelerate population flow."

"Third step, enhance basic infrastructure, expand urban scale, and create differentiated living areas."

"Fourth step, attract population to settle, expanding the city."

"Fifth step, strengthen the city’s cultural attributes and eliminate religious influence."

"Follow these five steps to build the city."

"This is the true fire seed plan. Its scale must be large enough, and it must be detailed enough."

"Relying solely on abstract concepts can’t save this world; we need to take real, concrete actions."

Chen Jian stood outside the temporary command post, watching the tools being manufactured in Mountain City’s underground factories, continually sent to the surface. He began to speak:

"We are now in the first step, namely the production phase of household supplies."

"However, the current products are too easy to saturate the market."

"The total global population is just in the millions, with many people unreachable, lacking purchasing power. Relying solely on daily-use tools to form irreplaceability is ultimately too slow."

"The best solution is still using guns and bullets."

"After all, no one lacks these; in this world, they are indeed a necessity."

"A necessity indeed."

He Shuo nodded initially but then spoke again:

"As long as we can solve the current resource bottleneck problem, we’ll quickly become the world’s largest arms dealer."

"Then, naturally, Mountain City will become the center of this world."

"But right now, we have a real problem to solve."

"These traders do not know what we need."

"The goods they bring for trading remain in the... wasteland era."

"Old batteries, lightable bulbs, gold..."

"Of course, gold is fine; we can use it as a base currency."

"However, if we want to establish our centralized system, we must... issue our own currency."

"Indeed."

Chen Jian nodded thoughtfully, then raised his hand and called out:

"Ji Xing, come over!"

Assisting Yu Qian with settling or rather handling the newly arrived Pilgrims at Mountain City, Ji Xing turned upon hearing the call and walked towards the two discussing.

"Commander."

Ji Xing looked at Chen Jian:

"What’s the matter?"

"We want to issue currency in Mountain City to establish a centralized financial system."

Chen Jian responded:

"I will ask Fu Xi to design a basic framework, but he doesn’t fully understand the wasteland situation, especially the details, which we cannot completely input."

"So, I need your advice."

"My advice?"

Ji Xing hesitated for a moment, then frowned and said:

"Honestly, issuing currency in the current situation isn’t a very good choice."

"Or rather, ’locking currency’ isn’t a good choice."

"What do you mean?"

Chen Jian asked:

"You mean to say, multiple currencies in parallel?"

"No."

Ji Xing shook his head and replied:

"Even parallel currency systems are impractical."

"Commander, I think you may not understand the underlying situation of this world."

"The Huaxia Army, despite... having gone through difficult times, never lacked resources or food from beginning to end."

"We’ve always been affluent, only needing to consider how to eliminate monsters without considering how to survive if we couldn’t defeat them."

"But others on the wasteland do consider this."

"Even the wealthiest traders must consider this problem."

"And the answer to this problem is only one: eliminate all indeterminate risks."

"Why has gold remained just a measure of value for so many years and never truly became a ’circulation currency’? This is the root."

"Because a piece of gold, no matter how small the uncertainty, can become a burden in critical times."

"But bullets and food have no such concerns."

"You always need to fire a gun, and you always need to eat."

"If, coincidentally, these two things can be part of the trade, then tell me, would you choose bullets and food, or gold?"

"Indeed..."

Chen Jian exhaled heavily.

In fact, he had noticed this issue before but never had the time to think it through deeply.

But now it seems... this problem is indeed quite serious.

The unstable environment can completely stifle the development of a monetary economy. Forget about issuing new currency; even strengthening gold’s status might be hard to accept in such a situation.

Do you want to exchange gold with traders for goods?

No, they won’t agree.

They will swiftly trade and convert all their gold in Mountain City into the goods they need.

What to do then?

If there’s no complete currency system, the trading efficiency of the entire Mountain City will severely decline.

At that time, let alone establishing a commercial hub, even maintaining stable commercial operations would consume many unnecessary resources...

"What’s your opinion then?"

Chen Jian asked:

"Directly using bullets as currency?"

"The problem with this plan is that we must produce bullets of different calibers."

"How should the value of different bullets be defined?"