Vanilla Lore Expanded: Silver Monday (Patreon)

2546 - The Silver Monday

The rapid development of robotics technology and the nano-tech sector led to the 26th century being a time of wealth and excess. Building new factories across many freshly colonized planets led to a rapid expanse of many mega-corporations. People from all across the Sol system paid every price to travel to the distant stars, where grass was always greener. Sometimes, that price was servitude.

Despite the inherent risk of speculation, it was widely believed that the stock market would continue to rise forever. After the Earth Reserve warned of excessive speculation, a small crash occurred as investors started to sell stocks in non-technology or non-colonization focused companies at a rapid pace, exposing the market's shaky foundation. What followed was totally unexpected: the price of the dollar plummeted and the price of silver ($SLV) went up a hundredfold. This event was later referred to as the Silver Squeeze, as the value of the Dollar was essentially transferred into a physical, tangible object. This has shaken not just the banks that operated on the dollar, but also the technology sector which relied on silver due to its value in the production of technology. Many speculated that on that day, humanity was a step away from ushering in the new dark ages, as technological progress would be reverted a hundred years, whilst the currency that united the world would become worthless.

Human economy showed ominous signs of trouble: inflation has risen rapidly as dollar lost its value, construction was sluggish as no company could pay its workers, which affected the newly developing colony worlds the worst, technological sales went down as the price of technology spiked due to the higher cost of silver, and consumers were building up high debts because of all the credit lines they had open essentially multiplied a hundredfold overnight.

Many tech companies recalled their products from the shops to scrap it for silver which has turned into the most valuable element known to humankind.

Despite all the economic warning signs, the Earth government did not know what to do and simply resumed trading on the following day. This could have been the worst mistake in the whole ordeal, as everyone who had any silver and a slightly-above-average intelligence level began selling it. Higher supply than demand resulted in a rapid drop in $SLV stockprice, whilst the price of the dollar went up due to increased demand. Many companies suffered catastrophic losses and had to shut down. Over the course of the next few weeks the market stabilized somewhat, but the price of silver still remained 3000% of what it was previously. Nobody quite knows why, but the price of the dollar was rising rapidly day after day. Many expected another squeeze, whilst others called it a healthy correction.

On Monday, June 6th, 2546, the colonial stock exchange crashed when the price of silver spiked once again, multiplying in value a thousand times. The dollar became worthless in the outer colonies, and like an infection this trend spread across many smaller stock exchanges across the rim of the known space. The earth stock market became incredibly unstable as the dollar started losing value. Minutes of selling and high volumes were interspersed with brief periods of rising prices and recovery.

The earth government did the only thing they believed was right - they delisted silver from the stock market. What was meant to serve as a shield against an upcoming market collapse, in reality led to an exodus of all investing banks away from the earth stock market and into the new, colonial one, where the dollar has lost all its value and silver became the new currency.

These were the last days of the Earth stock exchange, as with less and less participating bodies, the prices of all companies became more and more unstable. Over the next few days every reputable bank and company abandoned the Earth stock exchange and began trading on the much more stable, silver-reliant Colonial market.