Equestria is hardly the utopian society that many would like to paint it as. In just three short seasons spanning maybe a year or two in the life of Twilight Sparkle after her exodus to Ponyville, we’ve seen the land come under attack from demigods made of six different animals possessing powers beyond mortal comprehension, demon creatures from the gates of hell itself, and a mad, fallen alicorn princess determined to shroud the entire world in eternal night. Just to name a few.
If Equestria were, in fact, the happy perfect world that we’d all like it to be, then perhaps the denizens within would have found a way to barter goods and services without making use of an intermediary substance to mediate value- currency. There are indeed some science fiction universes that postulate the death and irrelevancy of such a device (most notably Gene Roddenberry's Star Trek universe, but such a thing is so un-Googleable that I couldn’t tell you if any others exist; I suspect they do), but for now the necessity of such a mediator is apparent to anyone: it just makes life easier for everyone if everyone agrees as to what things are worth.
As a result, Equestria has money, and it takes the form of bits and gems. How much is a bit worth? How much is a gem worth?
I’ve done my best to find out.
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