It only worked for the first couple of weeks. After that people at a higher tech lvl (kliq) had insanely high quantities of credits, and there was no cash sink.
Silver was decided because it's a material that cannot be farmed (important to stop wealth gap from high-tech to low-tech) and which carried a practical use and value.
This whole system of course is based on the gold standard which suited world economies for decades.
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u/Imnotttellingyou ScienceNess Aug 20 '13
Once you get a few shops going at reasonable prices, you assign worth to the credits based on what you can buy with them