Here's What Happens When A Currency Completely Breaks Down

In Venezuela, hyperinflation has become so pitiful that shopkeepers are no longer bothering to actually count money.

Instead, they’re weighing it…

… as in literally pulling out a scale and weighing giant stacks of money. Do you want to buy a bottle of Coca Cola? That’ll be 1 kilo of currency please.

One shopkeeper interviewed by the Guardian newspaper said he’s piling up bricks of cash so quickly he feels like Pablo Escobar.

And yet Venezuela’s hyperinflation continues growing worse; those bricks of cash are buying less every week.

This is an important lesson.

Throughout history, human beings have used countless forms of money.

Many of the ancients used commodities like silver or salt. The feudal Japanese used rice. The island natives of Yap used enormous stone wheels.

Today we use physical pieces of paper and electronic digits in a bank account. Large financial institutions and governments use bonds.

Each of these is (or was) a form of money.

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