Remember, carrying 1000 caps in the wasteland basically turns you into a noisy piggy bank just waiting for enemies to shake you 🐖

in fallout honest hearts the tribal ask "Why do you carry those caps around, they jangle like crazy."

The only thing that keeps a currency afloat is the people’s faith in that currency is worth something

Fallout 76 actually tried to explain why caps began to be used in some of the quests. Fallout 76 takes place only a couple decades after the Great War, making it the earliest Fallout game in terms of chronology. In the game, the Whitesprings Hotel had a Nuka Cola promotion where guests at the hotel could trade bottle caps for products at the hotel shops. After the war happened, the robots that ran the shops still were using that original promotional programming, so survivors were able to trade caps for goods. Survivors made their way out of that area over time, spreading the usage of caps as currency since at least in West Virginia, caps were backed by tangible goods (so long as the supplies held out anyways)

GREED, GREED NEVER CHANGES.......

Out of joke, when I saw in fallout 1 a Truck full of bottlecaps and a few Nuka colas, I wanted to know what it'd be like having 10.000, I've got exactly 9.222 so far.

"People were desperate for a currency that held some water" Heh, I saw what you did there. But yeah, I actually talked about this to a non-gamer senior citizen friend of mine, told her that "in this fictional universe, water is the new gold and bottlecaps are the new money" she actually said, "well, with the way things are going, that could be the way it is for real" Maybe we should take notes.

I was doing some cleaning while listening to this video. I picked up a small pile of rags i had on a shelf, and what fell out of it...? A bottle cap. Talk about funny

During the Great Depression, 1929-1940, there were "cash deserts". People printed up their own "money" to facilitate transactions. When Zimbabwe collapsed, people used an electronic IOU system based on email.

Contrary to popular imagination and according to Modern Monetary Theory, money didn't emerge to improve on a barter system but as a way of accounting for debts incurred through violence. There's some really good lectures here on YouTube it's pretty interesting stuff. Fun watch thanks for the vid!

I can't count how many gamers and youtubers will be playing a random game and off handedly say.."I need more caps..I mean money" or something similar

Big thing in federal prisons is stamps, everywhere from betting, haircuts, tattoos, commissary, basically everything. Mail stamps.

6:11 "Held some water" nice pun :D

Bottle caps are the main currency in Fallout because they were initially backed by purified water, a scarce and valuable resource, and were hard to counterfeit due to lost pre-war manufacturing technology. Their widespread adoption in the settlement of The Hub, by water merchants, led to their adoption across the wasteland as a stable and recognized form of currency. There I saved you 10 minutes. 😂😂😂

In my own playthroughs of the various Fallouts, I found ammo to be a more useful trade currency than caps. Small caliber bullets I'd compare to pennies. Larger caliber to nickels, dimes and quarters. The wasteland is dominated by firearms. The value of a bullet is intrinsic and obvious. They're also inflation resistant. Every firefight and raid decreases supply. Spent ammo takes on a new meaning.

basic economy explained in fallout terms

When fallout three came out I was in middle school my cousin stayed the night I remember from the vault springvale elementary all I did was pick up the prewar money I ended up seeing caps and we both laughed about it thinking a raider just collected caps I don't know that moment stuck with me

7:05 that actually is a milling machine. Bottlecap press does not require big movable table with T-slots for clamping in processed metal part. Okay, if You are stubborn enough, can use quill (movable up-down part that holds drill/endmill) to push on manual bottle capping device - usually used together with hammer instead of mill's quill I'd expect progressive die-punch press machine forming the caps from the metal sheet Liked the entire theory nonetheless 😉

@2:22 this type of bottle cap is made of steel.

I read a manhua in which a modern man is isekai'd into a bandit in ancient China; later, he establishes himself as a lord and seeks to introduce paper money to raise war rations but fails miserably until his businesswoman wife assists him by tying the money value to rice and offering yearly interest, which makes it a success. If you want to read it, it's called It Starts With a Mountain.