Honest questions: How do costumers and shopkeepers know the current value of the currency? Do they constantly check on phones/etc to figure out the price? And how do shopkeepers decide on the specific amount they will charge? Do they have a fixed price they want to sell in a more stable currency like USD and convert on the fly?
It never ceases to amaze me how people on the street simply know this stuff. Word gets around, rumors leak out.
I was told whenever the government printed a new bill, the street accepted it's value at $5USD (no matter what the numbers on the front said), and therefore everything that came before it went down appropriately. So let's say yesterday the biggest note was $1billion, and then today they print a $10billion note and release it - the street says it's $5USD, so your $1billion note is now worth only 1/10 of what it was yesterday, simply because a new one exists.
How long until they release a $20billion note? (or will it be $50billion?) nobody knows - except the corrupt govt officials who are profiting off the whole thing both ways.
I was told it was common to go to the Mozambique border and see guys exchanging notes that officially didn't even exist yet - the corruption ran so deep the govt. officials would release a $50billion note, but behind the scenes they were already printing and selling $100billion (and maybe even $200 billion) notes to friends and family and business associates to line their own pockets.
Then of course there were the times they would officially announce they were removing 3 (or 6) zeros from everything. So that $100 billion (100 000 000 000) note that was $5 USD is now officially only $100 000, but it's still supposedly worth $5 USD. Then next week they put out a $200 000 note, and what was worth $5 USD last week is now only worth $2.50USD, but it gives them a chance to get rid of a whole bunch of zeros, because, really, what good are a bunch of zeros anyway?
Yes, it really was that nuts. Utter insanity. I stayed with a family who took out a desk draw utterly stuffed with bills ranging from a few hundred million dollars up to the magical $100 trillion bill (the world's single largest bill ever printed). It's monopoly money now, and they even laughed about how it was back then too.
For my first weeks in the country I tried as hard as I could to wrap my head around the whole thing, and wondered endlessly how it all functioned. It felt like MASH or the book Catch 22 - so absurd it simply couldn't be real. But it was.
And while they now have "bond notes" which are supposedly locked to the $USD, I was able to sell mine on the street for ~30% more than face value, and even more if I dived into their digital currency - virtually all of zim runs on a digital currency now (called EcoCash) - I suspect it has one of the highest uptakes of digital currency on the planet because everything else is dysfunctional.
These days there really is an app for that (in reply to lower comment)
