[the original reddit post](https://www.reddit.com/r/interestingasfuck/comments/jyouap/14600000_bolivars_the_amount_of_money_you_need_to/?utm_medium=android_app&utm_source=share)
In: Economics
The problem with hyperinflation isn’t necessarily that a chicken costs 14 million somethings. If each bill is worth 1 million bolivars, then you actually don’t need that many bills to pay for the chicken.
The actual problem is that the price just keeps increasing. The government can decide to print a bunch of 1 million Bolivar bills, but by the time that process finishes, maybe the chicken costs 14 *billion* Bolivars. Then you’re back in trouble. And for what it’s worth, needing a wheelbarrow of cash to buy a chicken is one of the milder consequences of hyperinflation. The way it destroys savings and requires constant renegotiations of contracts are much worse.
Ultimately, countries beset by hyperinflation need to first stop the hyperinflation. This usually takes the form of a flight to some more stable currency, either by the government itself or by the people. Once prices stabilize, you can start thinking about creating a new currency or redenominating the old one to make the numbers nice.
The story of the Brazilian Real is the classic example of this. The original Cruzeiro was suffering from hyperinflation, so the government and merchants started also posting prices in terms of “units of real value,” which were basically US Dollars. Eventually, they just made whole new a currency based on this second measure and abandoned the first.
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