tl;dr: Crystite is what you earn by playing, Credits are what you trade and tinker with, Red Beans are what you pay for. The minerals, the research and the molecular printer of the earlier versions are gone, the things you collect now are parts, modules and key fragments.

Currencies

	Currency	Where It Comes from and What It's for
	Crystite	Drops from nearly everything, comes out of thumpers and is part of most rewards. Vendors take it, the first module combinations cost it, and it can be exchanged for Credits.
	Credits	The currency between players and for the Tinker. You get them from selling on the market, from the currency exchange (default key: .) and now and then as a reward.
	Red Beans	The premium currency. Bought with real money, or with Credits from other players through the Red Bean exchange on the market. Pays for cosmetics, vehicles, battleframes, rerolls and convenience items.
	Tokens and reputation	Outposts and factions have their own reputation, and their quartermasters unlock better wares with every tier. PvP has its own tokens and its own store.

The currency exchange only goes one way, from Crystite to Credits, and it has a daily limit of 1'000 Credits. Rate and limit are set by the server, not by the client: up to update 1.3 a Credit cost 25 Crystite, with update 1.6 it was 250, so the full 1'000 Credits took 250'000 Crystite. That limit is the reason Credits are worth something: everyone drowns in Crystite sooner or later, but the Credits for a +9 have to come from somewhere.

Things You Collect

	Item	What It's for
	Parts	Weapon, Ability and Battleframe Parts come from salvaging gear and pay for the upgrades at the Tinker.
	Modules	Drop from enemies and missions. Slot them, combine them or sell them, see the modules guide.
	Tinker's Tools	Raise the chance for a critical success when tinkering.
	Key Fragments	50 fragments can be combined into a Security Key by activating the stack. PvP matches, bounties and Elite Ranks hand them out.
	Security Keys	Open Secure Lockers, which hold some of the best rewards in the game.
	Caches	Weapon, armor, ability and module caches of rare or epic quality. Open them for a random item of that kind.

Where to Get Crystite

• Kill things and pick up what they drop
• ARES jobs, missions, operations and events
• Bounties, which pay Crystite for every single one
• Thumping
• Selling gear to vendors and salvaging modules
• Elite Ranks: 15'000 Crystite as a common reward, 75'000 as a rare one

What Happened to Crafting?

If you've played Firefall before 2016, you're probably looking for the molecular printer. Update 1.6 disabled crafting "temporarily" until a new crafting system would be ready, refunded the research points, the Crystite and the time spent on research, and changed the thumpers to extract Crystite instead of minerals. The new system never arrived, so in this version there's nothing to refine, research or print.

What took its place is described in the guides on gear, modules and tinkering. The guides for the old crafting systems are still around in the archive, if you want to see how deep that rabbit hole once went.