Imagine you have a cool trading card. It's just a piece of cardboard, right? But if everyone believes it's rare and can be traded for great stuff, then suddenly, it's valuable—because you believe it is. Money works the same way. It’s not just metal, paper, or digits on a screen. It gets its power from collective belief.

In 2004, U.S. federal prisons outlawed cigarettes. That may not sound like a big deal. But cigarettes weren’t just for smoking—they were the currency of prison life. Without them, the economy behind bars collapsed overnight. So what did inmates do?

They didn’t give up. They invented a new form of money. It came in a blue vacuum-sealed pouch. It smelled like the sea. It was mackerel.

Why Mackerel?

Consistent Supply: Each inmate could buy 14 packets per week.
Scarcity: Only a fixed amount entered circulation.
Utility: You could eat it. Or trade it.
Portability: Easy to carry and count.
Trust: Everyone believed in its value.

💡 Lesson: A currency works because people agree it works.

Two Types of Fish-Money

Eating Macs – Fresh, edible, useful for meals.
Money Macs – Expired, squishy, but still used in trade.

Even spoiled mackerel retained 75% of its value—just because people still believed it had worth.
That’s economic psychology in action.

A Hyperinflation Story (Fish Edition)

One day, a huge stash of confiscated “money macs” was left in a bucket by guards.
Inmates rushed to grab them—flooding the market.
Result? Instant hyperinflation.
Too many mackerels = collapse in value.

💥 Just like real-world inflation, too much money = price chaos.

Why This Matters

The mackerel economy reflects the fundamentals of economics:

Currency = belief + scarcity
Markets emerge everywhere
Prices = agreed value, not official value
Inflation can be triggered by over-supply—even by accident

The Bigger Point

Whether it’s Bitcoin, gold, or fish…Money is a technology we design. It needs:

Scarcity
Portability
Trust
Shared belief in value

Prisoners didn’t wait for permission. They created money when they needed it. So could you.

Fun Fact:

In 2008, Zimbabwe’s currency inflated so badly that people used trillion-dollar notes as notepaper.
The Zimbabwe dollar died—because people stopped believing in it.