Zimbabwe Goes Crypto
This year has seen cryptocurrency bitcoin shatter all growth expectations, continuing to defy dark predictions. In Zimbabwe, its growth has been particularly striking, all the more so amid recent political turbulence.
Sometimes, history is best told through the things we can hold in our hands. Keeping that in mind, the Zimbabwean 100-trillion-dollar bill provides an unusually vivid insight into that country's largely woeful modern economic story.
No legal banknote in history had more zeroes, yet it was practically worthless — at best, it would have bought you a loaf of bread. Ironically, the note today is a pricey, sought-after collectors' item, having bitten the dust as legal tender shortly after its introduction when the Zimbabwean dollar was abandoned as a currency in 2009.
