Design: system currencies

Status: agreed direction, for the shared galaxy under Modern rules. It expands section 4 of economy and exchanges from optional station scrip to a currency for every system. Single-player Modern may use a simpler version; Classic keeps plain credits, as in 1984. Numbers are starting points for playtesting.

The idea

Every star system has its own currency, and those currencies behave like real cryptocurrencies: floating exchange rates, liquidity pools, pegs that hold or break, fixed-supply "hard money", and a ledger anyone can check.

The tokens are virtual. They exist only in Witchspace and can never be bought, sold or withdrawn for real money. The theory is real; the money isn't. Commanders who know crypto will recognise the mechanics, and commanders who don't will learn them by trading.

1. Real mechanics. Automated market makers, order books, minting and burning, pegs, halvings and hash-chained ledgers, working as they do in the real world.
2. Rooted in the galaxy. Each currency's behaviour comes from its system's government, economy and productivity, the same values the original game generated for every system.
3. Trading becomes macroeconomics. A pirate blockade, a Thargoid incursion or a guild cornering a market moves a currency, and sharp traders profit from knowing first.
4. Server-authoritative and verifiable. The server keeps the books, as set out in servers and hosting, but publishes proofs so anyone can check it isn't cheating.
5. Virtual only. Nothing has real-world value; selling currency for real money breaks the rules (fair play).

Related designs: economy and exchanges, stations and worlds, servers and hosting, player-run stations.

1. One currency per system

• Generated from the seed. Every one of the 2,048 systems gets a currency name, a three-letter ticker and a starting supply from its seed, so Lave's currency is always the same and costs nothing to store. Names are original and generated; none come from the Elite novels or later games.
• Prices are local. A station's market, shop, fuel, repairs, fees and fines are priced in the local currency.
• The Co-operative credit (CR) stays the galaxy-wide reserve currency, accepted everywhere and used as the common pair on every exchange, the way stablecoins and Bitcoin sit at the centre of real crypto trading.
• Wallets. A commander holds a balance in each currency they've touched. The Bankers' Guild keeps the books (see banking).
• Anarchies have no central issuer. Their "currency" is whatever traders bring; prices are quoted in credits.

2. Monetary policy follows government

Each government runs its currency its own way. These are modelled on real systems:

Policy is public. Every system's rules, supply and reserves can be read at any station or on the galaxy map, so a crash is never a hidden trick, only a risk that someone ignored.

3. Supply: minting and burning

The money supply follows what actually happens in the system:

• Minted as the system produces: a share of its productivity (from the system's generated data) each game-day, plus policy issuance (section 2).
• Burned through station fees, fines, taxes and repairs, and when a station buys back its own currency to defend a peg.
• Shocks: blockades, raids and incursions cut production, so less is minted and confidence falls. Booms do the opposite. Market events from economy and exchanges feed straight in.

Every mint and burn is recorded in the ledger (section 7), so total supply is always known.

4. Exchanges

Automated market makers

Every station runs a liquidity pool between its local currency and credits, priced by the constant-product rule used by Uniswap:

local × credits = k

• Price is the ratio of the two balances. Buying local currency pushes its price up; selling pushes it down.
• Slippage: a large trade moves the price against you, so moving big money takes several trades, several stations, or patience.
• Fees: each swap pays a small fee (around 0.3% (to tune)) into the pool.
• Arbitrage between stations and systems keeps rates roughly in line, and is a real way to earn.

Providing liquidity

• Commanders can add both currencies to a pool and earn a share of its fees, as liquidity providers do in real DeFi.
• They carry the real risk: if the exchange rate moves, they end up with more of the currency that fell (impermanent loss). The station screen shows the projected loss before you commit.
• Pools in big, busy systems earn steady fees; pools in frontier systems pay more but are riskier.

Order books

Busy stations also run the order-book exchanges already designed in economy and exchanges, for currencies as well as goods. The pool provides baseline liquidity; the order book gives large traders better prices.

5. Crises

Crises come from the rules, not from scripts:

• Bank runs: if a Corporate State's published reserves fall short, holders rush to redeem and the peg comes under pressure.
• Death spirals: a Feudal algorithmic peg that breaks mints more currency to defend itself, which pushes the price down further.
• Hyperinflation: a Dictatorship at war prints until its currency is near worthless; prices in its stations soar.
• Speculative attacks: a guild can bet against a weak peg. The manipulation rules (position limits, public data) keep this a contest, not a certainty.
• Recovery: systems can recover. A new government policy, a relief convoy or a calm period lets confidence return.

News of a crisis travels like any other news (information that travels), so the first commander to arrive with a full hold of a collapsing currency's goods, or a hold of credits, can do very well.

6. The single currency: a union with an agenda

A powerful bloc pushes one currency for many systems, much like the euro. Its working name is the Meridian Compact and its currency the Meridian (MRD); both are placeholders for the community to rename. In Witchspace's story the Compact are the antagonists: polished, persuasive and very hard to leave.

How it works, based on real currency unions

• Joining has entry criteria. A system must keep inflation, debt and deficits within the Compact's limits for a while before it's allowed in, much like the euro's convergence criteria.
• Members give up their own policy. Their own currency is retired at a fixed conversion rate. They can't print, devalue or set their own rates any more; the Compact decides for everyone.
• One size fits all, badly. The Compact sets policy for its richest core worlds. When a member is hit by its own shock (a famine, a blockade, an incursion), it can't devalue its way out the way an independent system could. Real economists call this an asymmetric shock, and it's where the trouble starts.
• Benefits are real. Members get no exchange fees between them, a stable currency, deep liquidity and preferential docking and trade. That's why systems join, and why it's tempting.
• Bailouts come with strings. A member in crisis is rescued, but only if it accepts Compact control of its station fees, tariffs and budgets: austerity, imposed from outside.
• Leaving is brutal. A system can leave, but its debts stay in Meridians while its new currency is worth far less (redenomination risk). Rumours of an exit trigger capital flight before it happens.
• The ledger shows the strain. Imbalances between strong and weak members are published (like the euro area's TARGET2 balances), so sharp traders can see which member is closest to breaking.

Why they're the bad guys

• Expansion by pressure. The Compact grows by making life hard for holdouts: tariffs and docking surcharges on non-members, trade embargoes, and "assistance" offered to systems in crisis.
• Its own enforcers. Compact patrols escort Meridian convoys and blockade awkward systems. They're not police; attacking them is a crime only in member systems.
• Polite, not cartoonish. The Compact's messages are reasonable and its benefits genuine. That's what makes it effective, and what makes resisting it interesting.

What commanders can do

• Back the holdouts: run supplies through Compact blockades, keep independent currencies liquid, escort convoys to free systems.
• Bet on breakups: speculate on which member will leave next, or against a weak member's debts.
• Smuggle: buy at the cheap independent rate and sell inside the union, where the Meridian is strong.
• Work for the Compact: escort Meridian convoys, enforce embargoes, and take Compact combat missions. Playing the antagonist is a legitimate career, with its own rewards and enemies.

How stage 1 is built

• The price: the relay (relay/, on fly.io in Tokyo) has it from Binance; the game's server (server/src/btc.ts) keeps each answer 15 seconds (candles a minute) and passes it on; the exchange asks only while it's open. When nobody is trading, nothing is asked.
• The exchange: Bitcoin is the first row of the list. Picking it puts the real market's candles on the same chart (5 minute, 15 minute and hourly), the broker's two prices where the order book is, and a form to spend credits or sell sats. Your trades are marked on the chart.
• The wallet: sats on the commander, with the last 50 trades. It takes no hold space and survives the ship.
• The rules: src/economy/bitcoin.ts, with tests: spot fills and the fee, fresh prices only, out of reach of fines and the insurers.
• Not yet: the 1984 look's plain price list doesn't show Bitcoin; Classic never will.

Guardrails

• The Compact is an NPC faction run by the game, possibly with an AI-agent leadership as in player-run stations. Players can work for it but not take it over.
• The Co-operative credit and the Bankers' Guild stay neutral; the Compact can't absorb them.
• How far the Compact spreads depends on what players do, and it should never be able to take the whole galaxy.

6b. Bitcoin against the Witchspace universe (Mark, 26 October 2026)

Status: stage 1 built (Bitcoin against credits on the exchange, with limit orders, 26 October 2026); the rest is Mark's idea, to think through before it's built. Reading: Saifedean Ammous, The Bitcoin Standard; Andreas Antonopoulos, Bitcoin explained.

Every other money in this design belongs to someone: a system's government prints it, the Compact wants to absorb it, the Co-operative issues the credit. Bitcoin belongs to nobody. It's the same at every station, nobody can print it, and it weighs nothing. Set against 2,048 system currencies, the credit and the Compact, it's The Bitcoin Standard played out as a galaxy: easy money of every kind, government by government, against the one hard money.

Why it fits

The book judges money by how well it holds value across time, scale and space. Space is Witchspace's whole problem: gold and platinum are cargo, they weigh a tonne, and pirates take them. Bitcoin takes no room in the hold, because it isn't goods, it's a balance.

Two moneys: credits and Bitcoin

Credits stay the galaxy's everyday money and Bitcoin sits beside them. They're not the same thing.

Why not make credits Bitcoin? Two ways were considered and set aside. If credits moved with the real price, every commander's savings would swing with the market whether they chose it or not. If credits were Bitcoin (a fixed number of sats each), prices would be set by the game's own supply and demand and the live price would change nothing. Holding Bitcoin has to be a choice, and the contrast between the two moneys is the point.

The credit could inflate, slowly (to decide). If the Co-operative prints a little each game-year, prices in credits creep up about 2% a year: credits are safe from day to day but slowly lose value, and Bitcoin swings but can't be printed. That gives a reason to hold Bitcoin from inside the game, not only from the real market. Modern only, and slow enough to be felt over weeks, not in a session.

Holding Bitcoin instead of credits

A commander can keep their savings in Bitcoin and hold almost no credits, the Bitcoin-standard way of living. Stations still price everything in credits, but where Bitcoin is allowed you can pay in sats: the station converts at the live price, less a small fee, so you never have to sell first. The bet is the real market: if the price doubles your savings double, and if it halves so do they.

On the exchange

• The real price. It mirrors the live BTC price: Binance BTCUSDT, fetched by our server through our relay in Tokyo (Binance refuses Cloudflare's servers) and passed on to every player. 1 Cr = 1 US dollar, so the number on screen is the real number. A coin is about 80,000 Cr, more than half the dearest ship in the yard, so owning a whole one is a milestone.
• A Bitcoin row at the top of every exchange: Bitcoin · 80,251 Cr · the same everywhere · live. The same chart as any good, with real Bitcoin candles and your trades marked on them.
• No price curve. Buying furs moves a station's price; buying Bitcoin doesn't, because the station is only a broker for a market far bigger than us. Every trade fills at the spot price, with the broker's fee shown on its own (Mark): modelled on Binance's spot fees for a regular account, 0.1% for a limit order and 0.1% for a market order.
• Traded in sats. A new commander with 100 Cr buys about 125,000 sats; the screen shows both: ₿ 0.00125 · 100 Cr.
• Limit orders (Mark, built 26 October 2026): buy if the price falls to yours, or sell if it rises to it, with the credits or sats held until then. Fills are judged against the real market's own minute-by-minute history since the order was placed, so an order fills while you're out flying, and anywhere, since Bitcoin is the same everywhere; at your limit, or better if the price was better. A price that crosses the galaxy once a minute suits space, where news travels no faster.
• One price everywhere. It's one network, so you can't profit by carrying it between systems, only by judging when to hold it.

Elsewhere in the game

• Zero tonnes. It never uses hold space, cargo scans can't find it, and pirates and the Falcon can't scoop it.
• It survives your ship. After a claim: Your Bitcoin is safe: the keys were in your head.
• Nobody can take it (Mark). Credits are the Co-operative's money, centralised: fines and the insurers' excess are taken from them, with no say. Bitcoin is nobody's, so it can't be fined, seized or written off, and the law doesn't count it when it sets a fine to your means. That makes it the way to preserve wealth in a galaxy whose money can be taken from you. The price of that safety is the market's swings and the broker's fee. The law still has teeth: what your credits can't pay, it takes by holding your kit.
• On the commander card: Bitcoin ₿ 0.0412 · 3,307 Cr · 0 t.
• Real news. When the real price moves more than about 5% in a day, the news board carries it (Bitcoin up 7%: celebrations in the anarchies) and NPCs talk about it on the radio.

When Bitcoin meets the system currencies

• Dictatorships print, and their money collapses. Their people and the traders there run to Bitcoin; the commanders who saw it coming did well.
• Feudal pegs break. Whoever held Bitcoin instead of the pegged coin is left standing.
• Communist states ban it, because it gets around their exchange controls: you can hold it there but not trade it, and smuggling sats out becomes a career.
• Confederacies run on it. The table in section 2 gives them a fixed-supply coin modelled on Bitcoin; with this idea it becomes the real thing, as El Salvador did. The Confederacies are the Bitcoin-standard systems.
• Anarchies trade it freely, with the lowest fees and no questions; corporate states charge more.
• The Compact hates it most. Bitcoin is the reason no system needs the Meridian, so Bitcoin against the Compact becomes the galaxy's central story: Compact members tax it, Compact patrols hunt the smugglers, holdout systems adopt it.
• Later: a pirate can't scoop your sats, but can demand them as ransom when you surrender; anarchies pay bounties in sats.

The same everywhere: a yardstick (Mark)

Jump to a new system and its money is different: a new name, a new rate, a policy you have to read. Bitcoin stays Bitcoin. A sat at Lave is a sat at Riedquat, so it's the one measure a commander can carry across the galaxy and know where they are.

• Prices in sats, as an option. Any price can be shown in sats beside the local price: Fuel 14 LVR · 2,100 sats. A commander who thinks in sats compares systems at a glance, whatever their currencies are doing.
• Your worth in one number. The commander card can total everything you hold (credits, local currencies, cargo, ship) in sats as well as credits.
• Reading a crisis. When a currency is collapsing, its price in sats shows it plainly: what cost 2,000 sats last week costs 3,500 today.

Stablecoins: the other way out (Mark, 26 October 2026)

When a real currency collapses (Argentina, Turkey, Lebanon), most people don't run to Bitcoin first. They run to dollar stablecoins. The galaxy works the same way: systems and their people want stablecoins, coins pegged 1:1 to the credit by an issuer who promises to hold the reserves. Section 2 already has two kinds (Corporate States' fully backed coins, Feudal worlds' algorithmic pegs); here they become the everyday escape from a failing system currency.

A real choice when a system's money fails:

Pegged to the credit. The credit is the galaxy's dollar (on the exchange 1 Cr = 1 US dollar), so systems peg their stablecoins to it as real issuers peg to the dollar. Not everyone does: Compact members peg to the Meridian, multi-government systems to a basket of their neighbours, and systems that won't peg let their money float or use Bitcoin outright.

Three ways to hold the peg, as in the real world:

The Bitcoin-backed kind ties the real price into the galaxy a second way: a real crash sets off forced sales in-game, and commanders who watch them can profit.

Who issues them: Corporate States; the big companies (a new line of business for them, see companies and contracts); player stations, later; and the Compact, whose Meridian starts life as "just a stablecoin", which is how it draws systems in before anyone notices they've joined.

The real market tests them. An issuer's reserves can be partly held in Bitcoin, as some real issuers' are. Reserves are published on the ledger (section 7), so:

• A real Bitcoin crash pushes an issuer's reserves below what it owes. Commanders who read the reserves see it first and sell, or bet on the break.
• The run. The coin slips below 1 Cr, the news board carries it, and the system's economy shakes. Nobody scripted it: the real market did.
• A real rally does the reverse: over-backed issuers grow bold and lend more, which sets up the next crisis.
• Freezes. An issuer can freeze the wallets of commanders it doesn't like (smugglers, Compact enemies). Bitcoin can't be frozen; that's the trade.

Guardrails

• In-game only. It's the real price, not real money: in-game Bitcoin can't be bought, sold or withdrawn for real coins or cash. The screen says so, in the game's own voice (Witchspace Bitcoin stays in Witchspace: it can't be bought or cashed out for real money); where the price comes from stays behind the scenes, so the galaxy stays the galaxy (Mark). Nothing here is financial advice.
• Fair fills. Each trade fills at a price fetched at that moment, plus the broker's fee, so watching Binance gains nothing.
• Stale means stopped. If the price is more than a few minutes old, trading pauses: The network is quiet: price 6 minutes old, trading paused.
• Modern only. Classic stays credits only, as in 1984.

Building it in steps

1. Bitcoin against credits (built): the exchange row and chart, buying and selling in sats, the wallet on the commander card, surviving death, out of reach of fines and the insurers.
2. Paying in sats, spreads and bans by government, the news headlines.
3. The system currencies (section 10), with stablecoins from day one: Corporate State coins with published reserves, some held in Bitcoin, so a real crash can test them. Bitcoin and stablecoins become the two ways out of every crisis, prices can be shown in sats, and the Confederacies run on Bitcoin.
4. The Compact: the Meridian starting as a stablecoin, frozen wallets, Bitcoin against the Meridian, ransoms and bounties in sats.
5. Shared galaxy: paying other commanders in sats (escorts, wingmen's shares, bounties on players, contracts held until the job's done).

Open questions

• Credit inflation: yes or no, and how fast.
• Custody: only ever in your own wallet, or can the Bankers' Guild hold it for you, and can a guild fail with your coins in it?
• Stablecoin reserves: how much of an issuer's reserves can be Bitcoin, and whether players can see every issuer's reserves or only those of systems they've visited.
• Real-world swings: a real bull run makes holders rich without flying; a real crash halves their savings. That's the point, but it ties in-game wealth to the outside world.

7. A ledger anyone can check

The server is in charge, but it proves its honesty with the same cryptography blockchains use, without needing a blockchain:

• Hash-chained ledgers. Each system's ledger is a chain of blocks of transactions, each block containing the hash of the one before. Changing any past entry breaks every hash after it.
• Published Merkle roots. The server publishes each block's Merkle root and each system's total supply. Anyone can confirm that their own transaction is included, and that supply matches the minting and burning rules.
• Signed transactions. Each commander has a key pair; transfers are signed, so the server can't forge a transfer from your wallet.
• Open tools. A small open-source verifier, part of the repository, checks the published chain.

The ledger keeps the double-entry, append-only and invariant rules already in the economy design.

8. What it looks like in play

• Docked: prices show in the local currency, with the credit equivalent alongside. A Currency tab shows the exchange rate, pool depth, your balances, and the system's policy, supply and reserves.
• Galaxy map: a currency overlay colours systems by strength or volatility, with the last known rates and how old that news is.
• Fuel and essentials: you can always pay for fuel, repairs and docking in credits at a fair rate, so no commander is ever stranded by a currency they don't hold.

9. Classic and single-player

• Classic stays as in 1984: credits only.
• Single-player Modern can have system currencies with NPC traders providing the market, as a way to learn the system before the shared galaxy. Its ledger lives in the browser, like the rest of the commander.

9b. Stage one, as built (Mark: "now", 28 October 2026)

• A currency for every system but the anarchies, from its seed: an original name from the system's (Lave's is Lavar, or similar), a three-letter code unique in its galaxy and never a real currency's, and its government's policy.
• Policies, as section 2: Corporate States peg 1:1 with full reserves (a stablecoin); Feudal worlds peg by algorithm (a stablecoin, until it breaks); Democracies inflate about 2% a month; Dictatorships print about 3% a week, faster in a crisis; Communist states fix an official rate and let each visitor change only 2,000 Cr a visit; Confederacies have a fixed supply (fewer units buy a credit as the economy grows, with hard swings); Multi-government systems follow a basket of their three nearest neighbours.
• Crises come from the seed: a Feudal peg breaks some months (its coin falls to an eighth) and a Dictatorship's presses run. Each eases over a few days, but the damage stays: the money re-pegs lower, so buying the bottom is a bet, not a certainty. The news board carries them, at the speed of news.
• A pool at every station for its own money: local × credits = k, a 0.3% fee, slippage on big swaps, drifting back to the fair rate over about an hour.
• Stablecoins (Corporate and Feudal coins) are taken at any station at their rate, less 0.3%: the way out when a system's money fails.
• The wallet: balances by issuing system, no hold space, they survive the ship. Every swap goes in the ledger, and the server checks it (only money you had, never above what it was worth).
• The Money tab at each station: the money's name, policy in plain words, a crisis warning, the rate here and the fair rate, the week's change, the pool, a swap form, and your wallet.
• Not yet: prices shown in local money, minting and burning from production, Bitcoin-backed reserves, company stablecoins, liquidity provision, the Compact.

How the whole economy works now, with the real numbers: docs/economy.md.

9c. Stage two, as built (Mark: "build the next currency stage", 28 October 2026)

• Bitcoin-backed reserves. Each Corporate State holds between 10% and 45% of its reserves in Bitcoin, from its seed, and the Money tab publishes the split. Priced against the real Bitcoin market: while the reserves cover the coin, it holds 1:1; if Bitcoin falls far enough that they don't, the coin slips below its peg (harder the deeper the shortfall), and the news board reports a run ("reserves cover 84%"). It recovers when Bitcoin does.
• Confederacies run on Bitcoin. Their fixed-supply money is priced in Bitcoin, so it moves with the real market: when Bitcoin rises, each unit buys more credits.
• Company stablecoins (like DAI). Each big company (Hexon Holdings, Vorg Industries, Carriers' Mutual, Wexley-Yorozu) issues a coin backed by Bitcoin locked up at 150% of its value. Mint at a credit each (0.3% fee), redeem at any station. They hold their peg unless Bitcoin falls by a third from 80,000 Cr; then each coin is worth what its collateral is.
• Liquidity provision. Put credits and the same value of the local money into the station's pool, one position per station, and earn a share of its fees: higher at small, busy stations (about 20% to 42% a year). Impermanent loss is real: if the rate moves, you come out holding more of whichever side fell. Withdraw any time.
• Deeper pools for stablecoins, six times a floating money's, since anyone can redeem them at the peg and traders keep the pool close to it.
• Money news: runs on reserves and company coin slips join the crises on the news board.
• The server checks it: company coins are never worth more than a credit; reserve, Bitcoin and basket money get looser bounds (Bitcoin moves); only a liquidity position's gain counts towards the daily cap, not the stake coming back.
• Not yet: prices in local money, minting from production, order books for currencies, the Compact.

9d. Single-player finished (Mark: "do the three small ones", 28 October 2026)

• Prices in local money. The exchange shows each price and total in the station's money too, at the pool's rate. Credits are still what's paid.
• Minting and burning from production. World events move a world's output (a boom +25%, a war −30%). A floating money weakens while output is down and strengthens in a boom (by 1 ÷ √output); pegged money holds and its issuer mints or burns instead. The supply in circulation (productivity × output × rate) and the day's minting or burning are published on the Money tab.
• The server counts goods by the tonne, not only precious goods, so a sale of goods never had is flagged.
• Not yet (the shared galaxy): order books for currencies, fees and fines burned in local money, supply shocks caused by players, the Compact.

10. Building it in stages

Open questions

• Exact numbers: inflation rates, halving schedules, pool fees and peg rules, to be tuned in play.
• Naming: how generated currency names are built, so they sound right and never clash with real currencies or other games.
• Station scrip: do player stations still issue their own scrip on top of system currencies, or use their system's?
• Keys and wallets: how commanders' keys are created and recovered without making sign-in hard.
• Exchange limits: how tight Communist exchange limits should be before they stop being fun.
• The Compact: its real name, where in the galaxy it starts, and how its leadership is run.

Think something here should change? Say so on the ideas board, where others can vote it up, or email hello@witchspace.org.uk. If you code: this page is docs/design/system-currencies.md on GitHub, open to pull requests.