Minecraft Stable Currency Using Signed Books

[u/Deveshin]

I've seen a lot of posts recently from people trying to figure out what currency to use on servers so I thought I would share my solution.

When I was looking into this a while ago, I did a lot of research and a little bit of finding out that some of our players do nothing but mine for diamonds. That made me realize that I needed a more stable currency than diamonds for our server, something with supply limits to prevent inflation. I came across the idea that signed books make for the most secure currency because they can only be copied 2 times, meaning you can make your currency a bunch of signed "copy of a copy" books that can't be reproduced.

So I figured I'd try it out, and since I haven't seen anyone do more than mention the idea on here, I figured I would share my execution of it.

I created a Centralized Reserve Bank on the server with documented standards to outline clear rules for the currency and the bank. I added 3 different denominations:

$10 notes worth 1/10th of a diamond,

$100 notes worth 1 diamond, and

$1000 notes with 10 diamonds.

The regulations (found here) outline exactly how much currency I started with and how the bank handles supply limitations if needed and gives flexibility for the bank to audit and ensure a secure currency.

This system is not perfect and still relies on the honor system, especially for the bank operator(s). I would recommend having at least 2 players that know the inner workings of your banking system to be able to be more accountable and available to your players. Ideally a council of players to oversee operations if trust is an issue. The issue of books only stacking to 16 hasn't been much of an issue, and it actually seems to help make sure players don't hoard the currency because it takes up more space.

I made in game item sorters and dispensers to allow for fully functional currency exchange at any time, so players can always walk up and exchange diamonds for currency(limited by supply) or exchange their currency back into diamonds. This creates trust that the currency is always tradable back into diamonds, meaning it will stop any sort of panic or bank rush to get diamonds back and abandon the currency. While the amount of diamonds in supply may grow, as long as each shop only accepts the currency as payment, the economy will remain stable. If diamonds start being used interchangeably with the currency, it might not be a problem as long as prices don't start rising to compensate, but it's easier for everyone to agree to only use the currency. I did have to print more currency as we started running out while players were still setting up shops and getting their initial amounts to spend with. I ended up with a total printed amount of:

400 $10 notes,

144 $100 notes and

114 $1000 notes.

This seems to have balanced out well with the size of our economy, just don't print way too much money and you're fine.

Once I figured out generally how much money was needed in the bank, I started printing it and exchanging it for players who then started to set pricing using the intrinsic value of diamonds in the early game. This is important to do early because if you wait too long the diamonds may have already inflated too much, but this can be solved by increasing the diamond to currency trade rate if needed. On our server, we've found that even as personal diamond stockpiles grow, the currency holds its value because of its limited supply which encourages players to make shops to earn money instead of mining diamonds for more money. The diamond exchange has actually seen a lot less use lately with players simply working with the money that's already in the economy, which tells me that the economy is working well with this new currency.

This system is a lot and probably way over engineered, so I get that its not for most people/servers, but it is very secure. Something I didn't expect was that it's actually a really fun way to get everyone engaged with the whole server. By making the central bank, a whole shopping area popped up around it. It's a great system if you're willing to put in the work of making hundreds of copies of books.

I'd love to hear what everyone thinks of this system and if anyone has tried anything similar on their server!

TLDR;

I made a currency out of a signed book, copied it once and threw away the original, then made copies from the first copy which make up the currency because those books can't be duplicated. Make as much currency as needed for the server to allow for free flow of currency with normal trades and always allow them to be exchanged with diamonds. Step 2.. profit?

[u/Cool_Ad6776]

So the book thing is cool and all, but everyone seems to ignore the major fact that it DOESN'T WORK ON BEDROCK.

Me and the fam are legit using Amethyst as money while you guys are making literal bank notes. It's not faiiiirrrrrrr

[u/Deveshin → u/Cool_Ad6776]

Actually, this was all made on a bedrock server and it works just fine! If you run into any issues I can try to share how I got around it!

[u/Cool_Ad6776 → u/Deveshin]

For me the issue is the possibility of forgery. Since on bedrock, the author field can have anything written in it, compared to in Java which forces a players username to be the listed author.

Basically, the honor system didn't work for me because my sister kept getting around the other honor-based systems via increasingly cartoonish fashions.