Thread by @jolwalton

In some historic moneys, every 80 counted is rounded up to 100. So one transaction valued at 100,000 shells 'really' only transfers 64,000 shells, whereas 100,000 transactions of one cowry each would transfer all 100,000. Any guesses how such a convention alters market structure?

All else being equal, perhaps it favors the elite who are rich enough to deal in more expensive goods or in bulk when it's advantageous? But also encourages distribution via many small transactions, such as are associated with subsistence and more ‘everyday’ consumption?

Bearing on price-stickiness? The nominal price of a good can remain stable for longer spells simply because its merchants are not tinkering with the spread between buying and selling price, but rather reaping the profit associated with trading at a single customary price point?

Might it also 'deepen' the market, in the sense of making feasible a tranche of marginal investments to produce or to import (but then, also to export)? Is it worth thinking of in terms of production possibility frontiers? Artificial economies / diseconomies of scale?

Fwiw, this system is attested in the 19th century in what is today Mali. I am interested in the abstract question and prodigiously aware of the dangers of universalising mainstream Western political economy across different societies and cultures.