Lore: Currency

Back in the early years of the "Underworlds" history, currency much like how it was on Earth, followed an intensive Barter and Commodity system.As the name of the system suggested, for much of its early history, the Underworld and its denizens formed a currency made out of deals and trades. A process that apparently was so successful, that many of the underworld's inhabitants still use it to this day, forgoing the now popular "Monetary-System", that somehow made its way down into the underworld as the eons went by.

Today, outside of the Barter and Trade system, the money used in the now "modern" updated system, comes in the form of monetary figures that appear to be forms of what would possibly be similar to apparent though now obsolete, historical currency units, similar to that of Sangpyeong Tongbo cash coins or even Samhan Tongbo and Samhan Jungbo, which in Earth history was designated as one of the "oldest currency" known in Korean History, being casted at around 998–1097 AD.

The first attempt at a coin-based economy actually had failed as many preferred barter. Because of this, the use of coins struggled to gain popularity and was largely used instead by nobility or high rank demons, who looked for more "physical means" to flaunt their status outside of the traditional hoarding of jewels, precious stones and metals.

Today coinage as a currency is still not as popular as the Barter and Trades system, but still manages to find SOME life amongst the wandering traders and merchants known to distribute their wares throughout the underworld, especially of those who believe that having a physical means of wealth makes it less harder to get swindled out of their already precious wares.

Some Merchants also find a way to merge the systems together, creating an extensive trade system that runs on bartering AND monetary items, in order to properly deduce whether or not a potential buyer or seller truly wishes to take possession of their wares. Demon currency also doesn't run on a Decimal System. Virtually all modern currencies are now designated as decimal, a monetary system where the base unit is divided into subunits based on powers of 10, typically 100 cents to 1 dollar or unit.

Coins in the underworld do not typically follow the same unit. 1 coin = 1 coin and that's generally it, because many "lower-born" do not often come into possession of gold or silver enough to make a coin worth anything more than what it generally is. If a Demon is gonna sell something for 100 coins, then It's 100 coins, no gold allowed because it is unknown what the relative value between two currencies in the exchange would be. If it was known, then the value difference between both would still be staggeringly low, with potentially for example 500+ coins = 1 gold nugget, or something similar.



In addition, coins in the Underworld are also not officially named. Simply known as coins, they typically do not have a special title associated with them. However despite this, they are unofficially named, with many Demon Merchants referring to them as Grains, in reference and as a callback to how the economy had once relied on rice and cloth as the standard mediums of exchange rather than metal coins.