Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Surely if you want a place to store your isk, you do it in PLEX, not trit.

I remember when trit was 1.5 ISK/unit. We're more likely to go back to that than whatever you seem to think is going to happen any day now.

People mine to make ISK. They are not likely to suddenly stop accepting ISK for their minerals.

I build ships for sale. I am not going to stop accepting ISK for my ships.


Why do you think people are going to stop using ISK, and what do you think they are going to use instead?

There is no faction currency, so this is irrelevant.

If there was one, why would you think this was a good selling point for it?

Wasn't gold backed economics kind of ruined decades ago?

When faction currency is introduced it will become very relevant. Also gold backed economics don't have a fixed exchange ratio, thus there is great risk for inflation, and gold doesn't have much value outside of electronics.

For now. But it can and has changed for a variety of reasons, many of them linked to changes to the game from…wait…wait…patience…CCP. Used to be ISK was worth somewhere between 3-4 ISK. Then drone poo was removed and changes to refine rates for loot drops…viola 6 ISK/unit of tritanium.

So the price is determined by supply and demand, and that CCP does have some not inconsiderable influence over.

And that still does not answer the question of who decides that 1 Caldari Credit is backed by 1 unit of tritanium. Who sets that and what is to prevent them from changing that exchange rate?

And I don’t believe that nonsense about voting and not changing it. We see that kind of nonsense all the time. However, in economics there is a problem known as time inconsistency and such claims of “we’ll never touch it ever again” are usually not credible. Could CCP open it up to additional voting? Could CCP change it by simple fiat?



In GTN’s defense, resource backed currencies are much harder to manipulate. However, Gresham’s law indicates that people would prefer to hoard such currencies than use them as a medium of exchange precisely because they can be an effective hedge against inflation.

As for the notion of runaway inflation, the rate of ISK growth in the economy has been remarkably stable and CCP watches it and are aware of what could happen if it gets out of hand. So the notion of ISK losing 90% of its purchasing power is just nonsense. Exactly what mechanism would cause this sudden hyper-inflation. Personally, I don’t see hyper-inflation as merely really high inflation, but a sudden loss in confidence in the monetary authority. They do something to cause that loss of confidence, typically they do something along the lines of monetizing a large debt. However, CCP has no in-game debt to monetize. So exactly tell us how the in game monetary system would fall apart. Is CCP going to suddenly multiply all rat bounties by a factor of 10 or 20? And why would they do that?

Most of the world’s currencies are fiat currencies—i.e. they are IOU nothing types of currency. Are we to believe the OP would use RL currency as toilet paper or burn it.

And ISK has value in game because CCP has set it up as the sole currency in the game. We have no other significant means of exchange. We could all decide to switch to barter, but barter makes exchange much, much harder than using an agreed upon (or in our case, CCP agreed upon) currency. The problem with barter is the dual coincidence of want—i.e. if I have tritanium, but want mexallon and you have mexallon and want tritanium we can trade, but if you have only isogen, we can’t trade. So off we go looking for the people who we can trade with. Basically, it adds a substantial transaction cost to trade. We could also decide that we’ll do all exchanges via contract and in terms of tritanium. But sticking with ISK is just easier as the markets are already set up to use it. And most markets in Eve that use ISK are quite liquid meaning there are lots of buyers and sellers so that we can get what we want much easier and sooner.

The guy is coming across as one of those RL kooky gold bugs. My advice, ignore him. Let this thread sink down to the second page and then into oblivion.

Actually that is exactly why tritanium would be a good choice.

During WWI countries went off the gold standard. Then afterwards their monetary and fiscal situations were often chaotic and a mess. So people reasoned, “We’ll go on the Gold standard and that will sort it out.” But once you go on something you can always go off. This created speculative pressure for when nations would go off the gold standard and the demand for gold rose dramatically as a safe harbor…thus the price of gold went up. But as the price of gold went up then the currency price of goods and services had to go down—i.e. deflation. Now using the equation of exchange again,

MV = PQ

If P goes down, then either T has to go up or M and/or V has to go down to maintain equality. The most likely thing to happen is for V to go down. Why? Well the longer you hold money the more you can buy with it in this case. Hold on to that cash long enough and soon it will have an effect on the real side of the economy—i.e people are holding their cash and not spending it on goods and services. So then monetary phenomenon start to have real effects and the solution is obvious. Ditch the gold standard and start printing money (increase M). Countries that did this earlier did much better than countries that hung on to the gold standard.

Now, in the game, the ability of people to mass produce tritanium means that the price is relatively stable with a given set of mechanics. We won’t see a sustained price increase for tritanium like with gold above. Trying to corner the trit market would be very hard and prohibitively expensive…and would likely fail anyways and could wipe out the person(s) that tried it.

Still, I don’t see any of the real world problems with inflation in the game (aside from maybe PLEX prices) to indicate we need to switch to a resource backed currency.

I'd argue that CCP is our central banker. They could, do things like add/increase ISK sinks, they could also change rat bounties. My guess is since they don't see much inflation in terms of game items they haven't seen much need to mess with stuff.

As for fiat vs. gold backed currencies it is much easier to inflate the currency in the former case. During the Great Depression the U.S. government actually shrank the money supply! In 1930s the Fed was out there selling treasuries--i.e. taking money in exchange for government debt. By today's standards it was nuts.

But all that aside I see literally no reason to do this. That one guy wants to consider ISK of no value in game and convert it all to tritanium...fine, whatever. I don't care. Everyone else appears to have sufficient faith that CCP is not going to go off the rails and increase rat bounties by 1, 2 or 3 orders of magnitude.

I have removed a couple off-topic/troll replies.

The problem with loyalty points is that they can only be used to buy from a loyalty point store, they don't have a fixed value and you can't buy loyalty points from a faction.


Again, I'm not advocating to switch to a resource backed currency, but just to add one in case players want to use it. Just give the option but don't force anyone to use it.

OP - have you actually sat down and read all the replies that people have made, gone away and thought (coldly and dispassionately) about your idea before making your reply?
it seems to me that you're defending your idea because it's your idea and you want it.... if it was a good idea, other people would step in and at least HELP you defend it..... instead I see you against the world

Also - nullsec empires CAN and DO manipulate the cost of base minerals - I remember a few expansions ago something happened to zydrine, and so they stockpiled it immediately before, raising the price, then gradually sold off their stockpiles...... presumably making several trillion in the process.......

Curbing monetary inflation in Eve is simple, and it does not require multiple faction currencies. Eve's economic problems come from the fact that shooting rats, in all its forms, produces too many kinds of rewards, ISK being one of them.