A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, political instability was reflected in the forms of payment. Nothing new under the sun, or rather: under the twin suns of Tatooine, where the Star Wars saga originates, first visionary fable, now multimillion-dollar franchise. Today, like every 4th May, Star Wars Day is celebrated (the date, in English, May the fourth, echoes the Jedi wish “May the Force be with you”, may the Force be with you). The Star Wars universe, perfect and cared for in every detail, obviously has its own monetary system, which experiences alternating vicissitudes depending on the political situation. The official currency is credit, or rather: the Galactic Credit Standard. Born to unite an entire galaxy under the same currency, something to make even the most ambitious supporters of the single currency pale. 50 million inhabited systems and 69 million colonies: if each world of these systems had had its own currency, the situation would have been unmanageable. An ambitious intuition, given that the Star Wars universe dates back to the seventies, when the proposals for unique coins were still, in fact, proposals. The credits are digitized and easy to transport thanks to a sort of ATM called “credit chips” and it is easy to assume that, at least in the most advanced periods and areas, there were banks in which to deposit one’s loans and carry out transactions entirely digitally. It is a currency that also suffers from inflation: 10 thousand credits, at one point in history, are enough to buy the Millenium Falcon, but in another period, 5 thousand are not enough for fuel. The coin is guaranteed by the immense wealth of the planet Muunilinst and is issued by the IGBC (Intergalactic Banking Clan). What’s behind it, gold? No, more likely minerals of another kind, from which to obtain much more precious metals than gold in the Star Wars universe, such as the almost legendary beskar, highly sought after for the construction of armor. So much so that the beskar is used, in ingots, also as a method of payment in areas or historical periods in which imperial credits are less coveted or safe. We see it happening in Mandalorian, the recent series that aired on Disney + and set after the fall of the Empire, 5 years after the episodes told in Return of the Jedi (last film in the original seventies saga). -financial of the Muun (the inhabitants of Muunilinst): super partes bankers, happy to financially support both sides in interstellar wars. With the alternating vicissitudes of wars and political reversals, therefore, the monetary system also suffers. In moments of greatest instability, the planets, especially those furthest from the political center, start printing their own currency, not trusting the value of the currency issued by a weak and struggling central government. And so, for example, in the planets of the Outer Rim, it happens that traders refuse credit payments, preferring “something more real.” But how real is a Galactic Credit? Despite some attempts, more playful than anything else, to create dedicated cryptocurrencies (such as the Jedi Coin), at the moment we have to settle for those who have given themselves the task of studying and comparing similar assets between the Star Wars Galaxy and the United States. From the comparison of the baskets (weapons, above all, but also food and vehicles), the current exchange rate stands at 1 dollar for 1.44 credits.
