Russian Explorers Find ‘Swamp’ of Soviet Money

May 29th, 2017

I’m not sure at what age I’ll begin formal Homeschooling – Cryptogon Edition with my children, but this will be a great one for when I teach them about the fiat currency scam.

Via: BBC:

A group of explorers in Russia have found around a billion roubles in old Soviet money at an abandoned mine, but it’s all completely worthless.

The group from Saint Petersburg, who publish a blog on abandoned sites across Russia, came across the money after following rumours that large quantities of cash had been dumped in old missile silos near Moscow after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Komsomolskaya Pravda news website reports. After travelling for several hours across rough terrain in Russia’s Vladimir region, they found the mine overflowing with cash.

The site contains an estimated one billion roubles ($18m; £13.5m at current exchange rates, or $33.3m at the “official” Soviet rate in 1991) in Soviet Union banknotes of various denominations issued between 1961 and 1991, all no longer legal tender in the Russian Federation. The mine had been flooded in recent years, leaving what was essentially a swamp of banknotes bearing the face of Vladimir Lenin, the explorers’ YouTube channel shows.

According to their account of events, elderly locals told the team about the mine, but said that nobody dared go near the place because it was linked to the Soviet Union’s ballistic missile programme, and contaminated with radiation. However, Geiger counters showed that this was not the case.

3 Responses to “Russian Explorers Find ‘Swamp’ of Soviet Money”

  1. pookie says:

    A useful book for children is

    Whatever Happened to Penny Candy?

    https://mises.org/library/whatever-happened-penny-candy

  2. Kevin says:

    Owen wandered in and noticed this post’s title, so I got into a discussion with him about what inevitably happens with paper currencies. Then I mentioned that Auntie Pookie posted about a book that she sent him when he was still a baby. I told him that it was on my bookshelf and that he could read it whenever he felt he was ready. He’s in there looking at it now, although I think it’s still too difficult for him on his own at this point. This book will be the core text on confetti currencies at Cryptogon Homeschool. Thank you, Pookie. If he wants more someday, The Creature from Jekyll Island is sitting right there…

    Anyway, start ’em young!

    Oh, we also played around with this handy inflation calculator:

    http://www.usinflationcalculator.com/

    Yep, even a nine year old boy’s jaw hangs slack using simple examples on that one.

  3. soothing hex says:

    Russian and Chinese-owned dollars in France then Europe, mostly London, started the eurodollar festivities : no reserve nor capital requirements, so interest rates were low for borrowers and high for creditors. After the oil shock this came in handy to delay payments and push for exports to “developing countries”, the more so with innovative floating rate loans.

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