Japan has long harvested a shrub called mitsumata for its money supply. But when mitsumata started dying out, Japan frantically searched for alternatives to make yen.<\/p>\n
It found a lifeline in the foothills of the Himalayas. A low-value crop called argeli grew abundantly and served as a perfect replacement for mitsumata.<\/p>\n
Argeli was worth very little and was often the only option for farmers who’d lost their crops to wild animals. When the Japanese arrived, they turned the once low-value argeli into a cash crop.<\/p>\n
Now, one of Asia’s poorest countries is growing the money for one of Asia’s richest nations. And the influx of cash brought industry and investment to Nepal’s small villages.<\/p>\n
But while Japan loves its physical yen now, what will happen to Nepal’s new big business if the country goes cashless like much of the rest of Asia?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Japan has long harvested a shrub called mitsumata for its money supply. But when mitsumata started dying out,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":521248,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[28,101],"class_list":["post-521247","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-economy","tag-business","tag-economy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/521247","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=521247"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/521247\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/521248"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=521247"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=521247"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=521247"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}