Chapter 2515 The Empire's Economic Crisis

Li Yao and Li Jialing said that the real human empire has been set in the center of Xinghai for thousands of years, and the legal currency is called "Empire Crystal Coin" because the original currency system was linked to high-purity crystals.

From the very beginning, there were a full 500 million tons of top-quality spar as the backing of the imperial crystal coins. Every dollar of imperial crystal coins could be exchanged for 0.1 gram of top-quality spar unconditionally.

"Extreme" spar is not an exaggerated modification, but has strict standards. Only spars with a purity of more than 95% can be marked with the word "extreme". Only very rare crystals that are purer than the ultimate spar The essence of the.

This kind of guarantee endowed the imperial crystal coins with extremely strong credit and vitality, and helped Black Star Great Emperor Wu Yingqi smash the weak economic and financial system of the old Star Sea Republic into a complete collapse.

Spar is the crystallization of ultra-high-purity energy. It is indispensable for the daily practice and battle of practitioners, as well as the basic necessities of life for ordinary people, and even the colonization of alien planets. Therefore, it is a super hard currency that is 100 times harder than gold and silver.

Since the imperial crystal coins can be directly exchanged for top-quality crystals, the common people are of course willing to choose this currency, and choosing the imperial crystal coins means choosing the empire, but it is the old Xinghai Republic that has soared prices, inflation, decay and decline. Kicked into the gutter, uh, not the gutter, but the Star Federation on the edge of the sea of ​​stars.

To be honest, Wu Yingqi and his descendants, regardless of how evil these high-ranking immortal cultivators are, at least in the first five hundred years of the rise of the empire, the purchasing power of the imperial crystal coins was quite strong.

On the one hand, the quantity of top-quality crystals plundered from all over Xinghai has increased from 500 million tons to five billion tons, which guarantees the solemn promise that the imperial crystal coins can be exchanged for top-quality crystals anytime and anywhere.

Money deposited in the bank has interest, but it will not increase in value when it is converted into spar. In the early days of the empire, the prices of all kinds of spar were strictly controlled. It is inconvenient to trade spars directly online, so naturally not many people will store too many spars, and the risk of a run is not high.

On the other hand, the newly conquered world has brought continuous war dividends and expanding markets. During those five hundred years, various sects and families of the empire were in the golden age of vigorous expansion and prosperity. The whole society was prosperous and colorful. The soap bubbles are getting bigger and bigger. Even if the value of the currency is diluted, people's income has also increased significantly. Even ordinary people in the core area can share the dividends of the war. Life is not bad. Of course, I firmly believe in the empire and my majesty. I have strong confidence in the imperial crystal coin.

However, just after his 500th birthday, such a real human empire, full of flowers and blazing fire, broke out at the same time with internal and external troubles.

Internally, several consecutive "Nine Dragons Conquer the Inheritance" court infightings severely damaged the vitality of the royal family. The power of the government.

Externally, all the rich Great Thousand Worlds have been included in the empire's territory, and the cost of war and management difficulty for continuing to conquer the outside world have increased significantly. Coupled with the continuous attrition war with the Holy League, the empire has lost a lot of blood and reached the point of expansion. limit.

The vitality of a cultivating country like the True Human Empire lies in continuous aggression and conquest, using the blood and bones of the conquered to pour the prosperity of the conqueror.

Once the pace of conquest stops, the soap bubble bursts immediately.

The first economic crisis that swept across the entire empire broke out. Many people went bankrupt overnight, and all the bonds, stocks, and equity they bought became scraps of paper; more people owed debts that would last their entire lives. people became slaves.

At that time, there was one of the most famous cases. There was a high-ranking immortal cultivator surnamed Pang, called Pang Qingyun or something, who claimed that he had a way in the court and knew that the court was about to launch a "five million light-year expedition". Conquering more than a dozen or twenty Great Thousand Worlds marked on the ancient star map, and someone like him got the follow-up colonization and management rights of three of the Great Thousand Worlds.

In order to raise a large amount of development funds, he sold these colonization and management rights separately, and promised a super high rate of return, such as "doubling in one year and ten times in three years", luring a large number of greedy people to invest their lives .

In the beginning, Pang Qingyun did what he said. Not only did he return the high interest on time, but he also dragged investors around various star ports, saying that this was the empire’s expeditionary force, and that was his colonization fleet. Not to mention, he also made all kinds of beautiful renderings and even an immersive fantasy world, depicting the bright future of the development of the new colony, and making all investors flickering and elated.

In the end, not only a large number of people invested a lot of money, but also many immortal cultivators and even sects believed in him, and threw the coffin board into the illusory colonization plan.

As a result, the empire changed its colonization policy due to the economic crisis, financial constraints, and military expenditures. In principle, it no longer sent a large-scale expeditionary force to explore the Outlands as in the past, but developed a technology called "Star Child" , In the future, "Star Child" will be used for small-scale and more precise exploration.

This also means that the era of great expansion of the empire is over, perhaps forever!

Pang Qingyun's lies were self-defeating, angry people surrounded his "development group", and only then did he realize that he was playing nothing more than a trick of tearing down the east wall to make up for the west wall, borrowing new money to pay off old debts, and countless people were because of him. After jumping off the building, his trick was also known as the "Ponzi scheme" and spread to the world.

Pang Qingyun's scam is just an insignificant one among the thousands of soap bubbles that burst in the era of economic crisis, and there are more and bigger Ponzi schemes that have devoured countless people's wealth and even their lives.

The four elector families with ulterior motives not only did not help the court fight the economic crisis, but instead fueled the flames, allowing the economic crisis to intensify, which greatly weakened the final authority and vitality of the court, and made a fortune for the country, expanding into a behemoth that could not be lost.

As a result of this economic crisis, the Imperial Crystal Coin announced that it would be decoupled from the top-quality spar. No matter ordinary people or low-level immortal cultivators, they can no longer exchange for top-quality crystals at banks and spar reserve bureaus at a stable price. They can only exchange them at market prices. Buy.

However, the average price of all kinds of crystals in the market has increased by a full thirty times in one year, and crystals are the source of production. The price of crystals has skyrocketed, and prices have also skyrocketed. Everything has risen, only wages and currency values ​​have not increased—in other words , the imperial crystal currency depreciated thirty times within a year of the announcement of decoupling.

The wealth of all the citizens of the empire was looted by the four major elector families.

The four big families who seized a large amount of wealth by force took the opportunity to control the government and have their own rights to mint coins.

Although it is still called "Imperial Crystal Coin" in name, the four banks under the names of the four major families all have the right to issue, and an "inter-bank joint meeting" has replaced the original authority of the Imperial Central Bank, which is equivalent to taking the money bag of His Majesty the Emperor. They were all taken.

The four major families colluded together just for the benefit of each other, and they fought fiercely with each other. It is conceivable that they don't care about stabilizing the value of the empire's currency. Anyway, as long as the economy of their own territory can be maintained, they don't care about the flood outside!

Since this year, the imperial crystal coins have been running wildly on the road of depreciation, and the value has been diluted to the point where it cannot be added.

Another terrifying news dealt a fatal blow to the empire's barely perfunctory, crumbling economic and monetary system—at first, the Imperial Central Bank and the Spar Reserve Bureau were backed by five billion tons of top-quality spar. Crystal stones have always been the reassurance and ballast stone of the empire, but since which year rumors started to spread among the people, saying that the five billion tons of top-quality crystal stones had long been divided up by the four major families, and that they had been divided by the four major families. The high-level monks, those Nascent Souls and Huashens, were consumed in the practice!

"The four major families have divided up five billion tons of top-quality crystals and consumed all of them, so that they can cultivate so many golden elixirs, nascent souls, and Huashen at once, and their strength suddenly swells!"

Although the imperial crystal coins have been decoupled from the top-grade crystals, such appalling rumors have severely shattered the last vestige of confidence in the empire of aspirants. They were said to be rumors, more like plagues and curses, completely crushing the financial market of the empire As well as the economy and monetary system, those who truly believed in the Dao of Xiuxian were all disillusioned.

In the following hundreds of years, several economic crises broke out in the empire, and it gradually became what it is today. The warlords ruled, the economy was chaotic, and the localities went their own way. From the Nascent Soul and the Huashen boss, they don't believe in the imperial crystal coins at all, not even a copper coin!

If it weren't for this, there wouldn't be such a huge empire. After more than ten years of expedition, it still played triumphant songs all the way and won every victory, but fell into the quagmire of complete collapse again!

What's more terrible is that the Imperial Crystal Coin not only has a precedent of currency instability and vicious depreciation, but also all currencies have been virtualized and paperless these days, and there is no longer the concept of paper currency ten thousand years ago. After the spiritual network is completed, no amount of wealth is just a series of zeros in the account.

The imperial authorities are not so shameless as to directly tamper with the numbers in the citizens' accounts. The problem is that all transactions on the spiritual network will leave traces, and everyone's production and consumption information are all controlled by the authorities—this authority, sometimes local warlords , Sometimes it is the four major elector families, and sometimes it is the so-called His Majesty the Emperor.

With this information, one can grasp the wealth status of all the people in the empire. Naturally, one can pluck the hairs, knock the bones and suck the marrow, and even swallow the belt bones to squeeze them clean.