The United Nations Credit (UNC) is the standard unit of exchange across the solar system, formally established by Article III of the UN Charter of 2101 and backed by pooled Helium-3 stockpiles held jointly by the Soviet Union, the People’s Republic of China, and the United Nations itself.
The He-3 pooling arrangement among the three parties was initiated in late 2099 as a preparatory measure ahead of the supply shock expected as belt mining moved from slow build into a full rush. The Charter formalized this arrangement into a currency with full UN backing, replacing the ad hoc consortium structure with a permanent institutional framework.
Under Article III(2), local and regional settlement instruments already in lawful operation — including the Ceres-issued SP (shuǐpiào, 水票) — were not superseded and may continue to operate under their existing administration, provided they remain convertible to UNC at a published rate. The Council retains authority to recognize, restrict, or formally incorporate any such local instrument.
At belt distances, UNC transfers routed through Earth-based clearing routinely took a season to settle, creating practical pressure for local commodity-backed instruments like SP — a tension the Charter’s preservation clause was designed to accommodate rather than resolve.
A companion reserve instrument, the Antimatter Bond developed jointly with Hesperus Initiative, finally launched in 2142 — thirty-two years behind schedule and short by two-thirds of its originally projected backing.
In November 2179, The Peer Review’s segment on the Solano antimatter nozzle reported the Bond register filling against the instrument’s own design premise — 3,279 positions opened in the six months to 1 November, thirty-nine percent traced through shell entities to Argus Extraction Defense — and argued that the drive, even with an Ark-sized stage ruled out on fuel arithmetic, gave the reserve’s “never burns” premise a market: a kilogram worth burning in a courier or a warhead would put demand behind a twelve-kilogram-a-year supply.
In October 2165 the UN announced the Jovian He-3 programme — suspended extraction platforms in Jupiter’s atmosphere, first unit scheduled for 2170 — the first phase of securing the reserve’s source itself rather than relying on lunar regolith and purchased stockpiles shipped across contested lanes. The programme is administered by a trilateral directorate (UN, Soviet Union, China) established in 2164 under Article III, funded from the Antimatter Bond surplus until licensed-volume revenue makes it self-sustaining.
In September 2191, the General Assembly’s mirror-fold resolution levied the eleven producers of the 2130 chiral therapeutic class 96 million UNC over three years and funded a 120 million UNC programme over the same period — the remainder from the UN’s settlement health account — buying 3,900 treatment courses at 21,000 UNC each.
The 2195 Citizen’s Guide describes the UNC as still backed by the pooled He-3 stockpiles of the Soviet Union, China, and the UN, with the pool deeper than it was in 2133 after the Jovian programme began producing in 2170. It records the Antimatter Bond as the hard reserve above the UNC, no longer a planning instrument.
Sources
- UN Charter of 2101, Article III
- UN Weekly: Ceres Water Credit (Jan 2100)
- Luna Interplanetary News: Antimatter Bond Launch (2142)
- UN Weekly: UN Plans to Settle Jupiter (Oct 2165)
- Gray, C. — Money at the Speed of Light: How the Economy Works in Space (2167)
- The Peer Review — Antimatter at the Reserve (2179) — Bond register against the burnability premise: 39% of six-month positions traced to AED; small-scale burn demand survives the fuel arithmetic
- UN Weekly: The Bill — Assembly Adds Mirror-Fold Treatment to UN Insurance and Opens the Register (Sep 2191) — 96 million UNC levy; 120 million UNC fund; 21,000 UNC course price
- UN Office for Colonial Development: Citizen’s Guide to Governance (2195) — He-3 pool deeper than in 2133; Antimatter Bond as hard reserve, no longer a planning instrument