• Interstellar trade has dramatically greater cost per weight than anything else. Ships have to make long journeys to the edges of Solar Systems, and then undergo the incredibly energy-intensive interstellar trips. Transporting raw materials this way is prohibitively expensive, and even high value luxury goods are impractical to transport. Often the only profitable goods to transport are high density electronics, exotic materials, or complex biological material.
• While the cost of sending data on Interplanetary scales is high, the massive and insatiable audiences for content have made production of entertainment media, software, and other digital goods highly lucrative.
• The extreme value of goods being transported over interplanetary distances, both physical and digital, have also produced a lucrative interstellar utilities. The Interplanetary ships and Superluminal Engines are highly limited in number and require extreme startup capital which often restricts their ownership to government entities that can charge exorbitant prices for use of their services.
• Something something research agreements, political agreements, and migration agreements
• Interstellar Travel is not something most people will get to experience. The prohibitive cost means most interplanetary trips for people are one way colonists. Only the most wealthy, politically connected, or most in demand scientific experts tend to make interstellar trips.

• Much of the mineral extraction is moved to asteroid belts, moons, and other low gravity worlds, reducing the environmental strain on habitable worlds from planetary mining. Strategic materials such as fissiles and noble metals, occasionally Wofleonium, are sent to habitable centers, in exchange for human resources, manufactured goods to maintain equipment and amenities, and food. Interplanetary trade and resource extraction is a prerequisite for an independent, self-sustaining human extrasolar colony.

• Resembles 21st century trade. Regions of high resource concentrations export raw materials via maritime shipping and rail. Urban centers are concentrated around hubs of transportation such as deep sea ports, railway junctions, and along rivers. At these urban centers, research and manufactured & refined goods are exported.
• Even if a planet is completely under a sovereign nation’s control, economic blocs can still form, becoming political blocs and sub-states

The Sol System is the cradle of humanity, containing the largest human population, greatest industries, and most developed infrastructure.

• One of the major exports of the Sol system is one-way colonists. Though this has largely tapered off since the era of the Scattering, the Sol system is still the most populous human system and the one most full of people looking for a new life.
• High end electronics, manufacturing equipment, medicine, and just about any other complex material can be created and exported from Sol
• The large population also leads to one of the largest entertainment complexes. Sol Culture is often exported to other systems through the SLE network
• Similarly, Sol has a large population that has an unending appetite for entertainment. The Sol system imports content from throughout the Human sphere
• Sol has little of the exotic materials for FTL travel, and will often import either exotic materials or the Aoi Si artifacts made of exotic material
• Small increases in efficiency can have massive effects when deployed at scale. Software and custom genetics are often imported into Sol

Atlantica's development has focused on development of the system's habitable world instead of on space infrastructure. This has caused the system to lag further and further behind the rest of the Human Sphere. It has little to export to other star systems besides trace amounts of exotic materials pulled from the waters of the planet. It is heavily dependent on other star systems for complex technologies, software, and entertainment content.

Due to centuries of buildup of economic inertia and development of financial institutions, the American Union Dollar (UD) is the most valued currency for international trade on Earth, and interplanetary trade in the Sol System, the most financially active system in human space.

However, due to the limited nature of interstellar trade, often resulting in governmental and corporate agreements where price tags are hard to quantify, currency is most commonly used at the interplanetary level, with each system typically having its own dominant coin, even within a greater sovereign body. Even then, major gravity wells will have their own coin, and habitable words may be subdivided even further.

• AA (Astra - Commonwealth of Worlds )
• BUL (Bullets - Common Grawl )
• FKQ (Jiaozi (交子) or Fāng Kǒng Qián (方孔錢) - Daqin )
• HCB (Hechuangbi - HCB )
• HMB (Huamingbi - HFR )
• GMB (Gaomingbi - HFR )
• LBB (Lianbangbi - HFR )
• Metals (Metals - Grawla Mountain Clans )
• RUB (Ruble - Soyuz Sotsialisticheskikh Mirov )
• UD (Union Dollar - American Union )