Lit Has the EU explained why credits are useless to Watto in TPM?

Maybe that was the credit limit on the card mentioned earlier here.

 

Come to think of it, Star Wars uses mostly digital currency right? I don't know how it works in real life, but it can't be that hard to get your currency exchanged can it?

 

Indeed, but I'd seen the issue a lot of times before.

 

This reminds me how quickly bitcoin caught on. For something that isn't "real", it sure gets a lot of attention.

 

Sorry for the double post but I can't find a way to edit my last post now. Considering Watto lost a slave and a lot of money, I wonder, even with the difficulties and potential financial legal issues all listed here, (and in light of his state by AOTC), when all is said and done he regrets not just taking Qui-Gon's 20,000 credits and worrying about the exchange details etc. later.

I also wonder what would happen if Watto did accept Qui-Gon's line about taking up the deal with the Hutts, when Watto accuses Qui-Gon of cheating. Was Qui-Gon going to follow through with that? Did he have R2 secretly recording every exchange with Watto or have a recorder hidden on him? Even if Qui-Gon had the Hutts put Watto in his place, wouldn't that have risked exposing the Queen's location to the Trade Federation (and thus confirming Panaka's fears of landing on Tatooine?)

 

IIRC, the old Secrets of Tatooine SB by WOTC indicated that "Hutt currency" was a scam where the Hutts had a number of arbitrary currencies where exchange rates changed all the time - and to make it work, insisted that all transactions on Hutt-controlled worlds only use Hutt currency.

 

In fairness, SW has never focused on economics as an aspect of worldbuilding and its sort of tertiary to SW as a setting.

So I wouldn’t get to upset at Lucas or Lucasfilm over it.

If anything the gaps in this regard allow the fans to use their own imagination.

That fits the Hutts gangster modus operandi but I wonder how they enforced that, especially given they don’t run some sort of Orwellian mass surveillance in their space, the Hutts methods of enforcement strike me as too crude and brutish to do that-at least with anything more than middling success.

 

Now that I'm back from vacation, I found the appropriate section from the book:

"In order to make even more profit, the Hutts have imposed a currency system based on their Hutt trugut, rather than adapting the Republic datary. Although they have plenty of fiscal reasons explaining their decision, the truth is that they offer a miserable exchange rate from credits to truguts, then redeem the credits in some other system that does honor Republic currency.
Most businesses accept only Hutt money, their owners not being equipped (or in some cases, intelligent enough) to make the conversion. Republic credits can be exchanged for Hutt currency at the customs office. In converting back to credits, the Hutts impose a 25% exchange fee - further making a profit from visitors to Tatooine. Even so, those leaving Tatooine are wise to pay the fee. Hutt currency is worth nothing except on a Hutt-controlled world."

 

In essence financial gangsterism.

Fits the Hutts to a tee.

It makes sense the Hutts would try to limit republic currency use and keep their economy relatively unintegrated with the republic one.

 

One of the codex enteries in TOR explains it as him being from a group of Hutt colonies that joined the Republic

After the Pius Dea Crusades, the Republic stagnated, forced to rebuild alliances Puis Dea had damaged. However, during the Rianitus Period, the Republic began to enjoy prosperity again under a new Supreme Chancellor, Blotus the Hutt.

Blotus had been the administrator of a network of mining worlds that split from the remnants of the former Hutt Empire. He and his worlds applied for Republic membership, and although tensions between Hutts and the Republic remained, Blotus proved both competent and popular in the Galactic Senate. He was eventually elected Supreme Chancellor by an overwhelming majority, and his position was solidified when his tax breaks for independent traders brought Coruscant into an economic boom and improved trade throughout the Core Worlds.

Well, ultimatly money has value due in no small part to the fact that peaple say it has value (in part - of course their are other factors; for instance scarcity and an ability to back up paper money with gold or other assests) - at the end of the day a doller bill is just green paper with pictures of a dead person on it, after all, and is really no more valuble or special then a tissue when you think about it.

When I was a kid we used to use acorn caps as "money" on the school playground. The caps did'nt actually have any value and we all knew that, but we just accepted they did and becuase we did "boom" instant economic system.