"Joining in the fun?" The money house manager gave Hou Tao an ambiguous smile, having understood what he was really getting at.
"This is a letter of recommendation from the First Biochemical Research Institute on Heavenly Dragon Peak, along with collateral documents for my properties in Nine Ridges City and proof of the credit facilities I have with your establishment..."
"I hope to obtain no less than five hundred million in ready talisman coins before October. I would also like your establishment to help me open a trading seat on the Heavenly Net Network and provide leverage of at least twenty to one..."
What Hou Tao was discussing was actually a new form of trading that had recently become popular throughout the Myriad Heavens: futures trading.
From barter in remote antiquity, when cultivators traded all manner of heavenly treasures, magical treasures, and pills among themselves, to transactions involving intangible things such as cultivation methods and insights, and then to using spirit stones as a standard to unify monetary valuation, trade had essentially remained within the bounds of spot transactions.
Reliable though this approach was, it hampered many kinds of economic activity.
Li Chen had noticed that the Myriad Heavens were thick with sects and other powers, spirit peaks and blessed lands. Some great aristocratic clans and sects had existed far longer than ordinary undying beings who had attained longevity. An individual might fail to attain longevity through the Dao, but his lineage and kingdom could endure. This provided a foundation for forward trading, so he had simply brought over the futures trading system as well, planning to establish a bulk commodities market centered on the buying and selling of futures contracts.
In all fairness, this thing was never intended for ordinary cultivators, or at least not for rogue cultivators.
It