The merchants conspired to reintroduce the bottle cap as a currency, out of frustration at NCR's ineptitude in handling the currency crisis. In response to the loss of faith, merchant consortiums of the Hub established their own currency, the veritable bottle cap, backing it with water (exchanging a standardized measure of water for caps).

Since then many wastelanders lost faith in it as a medium of worth, both as a result of it not being backed by anything but the government's word and the inevitable inflation. To protect against actual economic collapse, the NCR government abandoned the gold standard and established fiat currency, not payable in specie. Since the NCR was unable to realize these withdrawals, particularly towards the frontier, faith in their currency considerably dropped. NCR citizens panicked and rushed to reclaim the listed face value of currency from NCR's remaining gold reserves. However, during the Brotherhood War the Republic's gold reserves were destroyed by Brotherhood raids to the point where new gold coins could not be minted and paper money could not be properly backed with gold. In the 23rd century, the venerable western bottle caps were eventually supplanted by minted and printed currency, New California Republic (NCR) dollars, backed by gold, rather than water. The adoption took place rapidly, as within ten years of Hub's founding in 2093, caps became the standard currency of the wasteland. These factors led to their adoption by Hub merchants in New California as common unit of exchange, backed by water. The paint used, machining, and metal type all have to be very specific in order for a bottle cap to be genuine. While widely available, they are also in limited supply, as the technology necessary to manufacture them was largely lost to time and the Great War, and difficult to produce by hand. Bottle caps are one of the symbols of the post-nuclear economy.

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