New Martian Credit

The New Martian Credit, or NMC for short, is the most widespread legal tender on Earth, Luna, Mars, and the surrounding colonies. The terrestrial governments of Earth had tried and failed to adopt a standardized currency several times, but following the economic collapse, inflation ran rampant throughout civilized space. The New Martian Credit, originally a fiat currency issued by the Martian government to keep their society stable, suddenly had value when they used it to absolve the massive debt that they were owed by Earth, and suddenly all the commodity-backed representative currency owned by Earth and Luna belonged to Mars.

Appearance
NMCs are printed on paper-thin polymer bills, with microscopic etching and magnetic strips to record their tracking number and prevent counterfeiting. Terrestrial merchants use laser grids to authenticate the bills by scanning their etchings. Despite the fact that all of the currency is tracked electronically, the push towards a bank note-based currency resulted from a general mistrust of computers and credit chits. Printed on the front of the standard 100 credit bill is a portrait of Lang-xiu Fang, founder of the first Martian colony, and other bills depict important figures such as Yuri Gagarin, the first man in space, and David Prescott, leader of the first Lunar colony.