5 lats coin coins were never minted as the Second World War broke out. After the Soviet occupation of Latvia in 1940, lats continued to circulate alongside the Soviet ruble, although silver coins had largely disappeared from circulation. (Even prior to the war, Latvian people had started to hoard silver coins to prepare for the imminent crisis.) On 25 March 1941, all denominations of lats were abruptly annulled. As the general society was given no prior warning, an estimated 50 million lats were never exchanged for rubles. The people were left with suddenly-worthless coins and bills, except for sentimental value and the silver
Currency substitution displaced by a stable currency. At the beginning of this process, the store-of-value function of the domestic currency is replaced by the foreign currency. Then, the unit-of-account function of the domestic currency is displaced when many prices are quoted in a foreign currency. A prolonged period of high inflation will induce the domestic currency to lose its function as medium of exchange when the public carries out many transactions in foreign currency. Ize and Levy-Yeyati (1998) examine the determinants of deposit and credit currency substitution, concluding that currency substitution is driven by the volatility of inflation and the real exchange