To expand, the wealthy would hold money in commodity hedge funds. Presumably the banking system tried to diversify to the max in financial assets directly linke

To expand, the wealthy would hold money in commodity hedge funds. Presumably the banking system tried to diversify to the max in financial assets directly linked to the real economy. Look at it this way: an inflation index is a low-dimensional approximation of inflation in the economy as a whole. But the coefficients of this approximation are effectively random, even if well substantiated by consumer budget surveys etc. (which they were). As inflation grows you have to consider the risk that the index (or the USD, for that matter) diverges from your current and probable future cost structure. Maybe it underweighs diapers and you're about to have children. Maybe a lot of people are about to have children and renege on their debts, if you're a bank. So the USD is basically the price of all imported goods, but Brazil is a big economy that's not a simple "exports X, imports everything else". During hyperinflation my parents used it for long-term savings -- they had immigrated to Brazil, who knows if they might have to move countries again. But they mostly did big supermarket rounds to last 1 month+ of goods and otherwise trusted banks for medium-term (say, to buy a car) savings.