Widdershins

Ah yes I see what you mean - a currency cannot appreciate or depreciate if the supply is fixed. Equestria should really adopt fiat paper money, but what they lack in economic function they gain in nice trees. priorities

Gold has a messy history for sure. It is notable for having "intrinsic value" unlike paper money, but what does that even mean? You can't eat it or anything like that, humans have just decided that gold has value because it's shiny and everyone seems to accept that. But I could be wrong; my opinions regarding money and the economy are fairly radical

If Cloudsdale and Ponyville use different currencies then Equestria is even more of a political/economic mess than we thought as capable as Twilight is I'm not comforted by the idea that the series could end with Celestia's hand-picked successor taking the throne, especially given Twilight's blatant penchant for nepotism #CelestiaOut #DemocracyNow

I think we can agree, yes, that the "Fluttershy as Currency" shtick was merely a joke? Not to be taken literally like her friend meant that little to RD? More of along the lines that she was desperate at the time and she was sitting there not doing anything else at the time. Course, this does call in theorhetical guesses as to the conversion from Bits to Yays.

 I daresay, Occam's Razor comes into play here. Perhaps, both in a fact being written into the show & the inner workings of the world, a bit isn't much more than a number and doesn't stand in for some other quantity, supposedly. That it's agreed on beforehoof by the vendor that their product is worth "a Bit or two." Not some longstanding system of balances that is so convoluted that it's lost all semblance of quantification for goods.

 So that, in different parts of the day, one vendor may say two cherries is worth a bit, as well as a one-bit Book or a small piece of furniture for the same bit.

 I should say, indeed, that the fact a nearly farmer's market of sales being held up purely by merit of Trading objects and Trade only does exemplify the pony train of thought that monetary worth means almost nothing in this world. Heck, what are the richest, snootiest "high class" ponies marked for? Not actual wealth or by what they own... but by pure standing in the aristocracy. And likely by vague claims by who's most closely related to the Immortals heading aforesaid society, but natch.

I can't tell if that's a really amazing or really terrible world to live in well everyone seems very happy so