At the Open 2018: Platform Co-operatives Conference in London, delegates heard about some of the latest approaches to setting up digital currencies.
Community currencies expert Michael Linton, who designed the local exchange trading system (LETSystem) in 1983, has written and spoken on many aspects of community money systems. At the conference, he talked about the idea of developing a circular money system, where money always flows to where it is needed, providing funding for services valuable to the society. This would mark a shift in mindset – from an ownership to a value flow model, he said.
Matthew Shuttle, communications director at HOLO, explained how his enterprise had developed a distributed network to shift the financial paradigm and create a new user-centric web ecosystem. Their cryptocurrency, Holo, is based on Holochain, an alternative to Blockchain.
There is no mining on Holochain, which requires only the devices of the users themselves. The architecture was developed using certain elements from Bitcoin and others from Bittorrent. The technology enables Holochain users to access data on each other’s devices without a central authority to coordinate it.
The aim of Holochain is not to develop a cryptocurrency, says Mr Shuttle, but to act as a means for communities to foster economic activities.
Arthur Brock, cofounder of Holo, added that Holochain wanted to be a mutual platform for apps.
“We encourage people to build currencies on top of Holochain,” he said. “All these currencies aimed to address issues with flows, there can be flows within co-op sector. If we want to create a ledger system across co-ops we don’t want that to be exploitative.”
A similar initiative comes from Community Forge, a non-profit organisation that designs, develops and distributes tools around complementary currencies.
Community Forge has provided an exchange platform to more than 600 communities to establish and manage their complementary currency.
Co-founder Matthew Slater explained how the quantity of tokens issued in a cryptocurrency is fixed by the algorithm and the value varies, which means it can be used for payments and settlements but also speculation.
“In a mutual credit system – almost creating money by buying something from someone and extending credit to them, and then they buy something from you, so you don’t need money – all you need is a ledger,” he said. “This is token kind of money – a fixed quantity at valuable price.
“Many traders are reluctant to use bitcoin because they don’t know how much it’s going to be worth in the future. Tokens just exist and we pass them around to settle debts and when money is credit it facilitates exchange, I do something for you but you do something for me, too. It works better as a means of settlement. Within the co-op movement we should be issuing credit to each other.”
Open Co-op co-founder, Oliver Sylvester-Bradley, raised concerns around who could provide funding for creating a co-op coin, along with developing an exchange platform for the system and managing the project.
“The co-op coin or mutual credit idea is one of the key projects of Open Co-op. Get involved,” he told delegates, encouraging them to read more about the project on Open Co-op’s website.
