Currency includes all forms of tangible money (coins, bills, commodities, physical tokens...) as well as intangibles (time, energy, digital accounts...). The word implies "flow"... because currency ALWAYS flows opposite to the movement of Goods and Services.

An enormous amount of suffering and ecosystems degradation is due to a general lack of understanding of the nature of currencies. One transitional solution is to work on setting up dual or multiple currency systems; one central official "hard" currency balanced by one or more "soft" community currencies

We now know enough to design good currencies.

Yin-Yang model

If we put all currencies on a Yin-Yang spectrum (as proposed by Bernard Lietaer[1], Michael Linton and others):

• True Gift Economies (gift circles, online collaboration, potlatches) are examples of the Yin pole (all about relationships, abundance, trust, slow, very-long-term planning and nurturing) best used for maintaining or regenerating tribes and local communities.
• Official Legal Tender (dollars, euros, etc) are examples of the Yang pole (all about competition, scarcity, fear, fast, short-term planning and clever wizardry) best used for international trade and national treasures.

Listed here, are currencies from primarily Yin to primarily Yang, each serving different objectives:

• Mutual Credit systems with no convertibility to official currency and some form of demurrage (ex: High Middle Ages, Egyptian Ostraca, and ROCS below)
• Mutual Credit systems with no convertibility to official currency (ex: all TimeBanks, majority of LETS)
• Currencies backed by local business using printed money and/or coins, but not exchangeable with legal tender (ex: Community Way)
• Mutual Credit systems exchangeable with legal tender (ex: some LETS)
• Fiat currencies using printed money and/or coins, exchangeable with legal tender (ex: Ithaca Hours, Chiemgauer)
• Commercial or Government Proxy Currencies promoting loyalty, non-exchangeable with legal tender (ex: coupons, stamps, air miles)
• any currency backed by the power to impose and collect taxes and not charging interest (no usury, public banks)
• any currency backed by debt and for which interest has to be paid but which clears all debts once in a while (ex: jubilee, debt forgiveness)

It is up to each group, community or region to design or pick an appropriate currency mix to match their mission statements

Brief History of currencies

• First recorded transactions were on Sumarian clay tablets (now Irak). Possible scenario: After the last mini Ice Age, the population in the Fertile Crescent exploded leading to the invention of agriculture and the problem of storing harvests. Temples were built to store harvests and maintain good relations with the appropriate divinity. Oral accounting became complicated (pre-literate people did not have words for anything other than maybe the first few of our numbers) leading to quarrels; someone came up with the idea of drawing pictographs (or etching notches) of the goods being stored in the temple as receipts. Those pictographs became a writing system and a counting system; This abstraction of reality (harvest) into virtuality (numbers) started the process of switching from concrete reality to abstract modeling and the corresponding creation of widespread military dictatorship and imposition of taxes, which correlates with a transition from worship of an Earth goddess to a Sky or Sun god. When the weather was bad, farmers owed the ruler a debt payable ultimately in the form of slavery.
• As more and more farmers got into debt, rulers had to erase all debts every once in a while (aka: Jubilee years) to calm everyone down (prevent rebellion) and reboot the economy.
• in Egypt, the temples issued receipts for grain on pottery fragments (ostraca) for 2000+ years which the people used as a community currency parallel to the gold and precious commodities that the pharaoh used for external trade and treasures. They used math to devalue the ostraca by 10% per year (demurrage or negative interest rate)... which had the effect of forcing the ordinary folks to spend rather than hold their ostracas. The more money flows, the more everyone becomes wealthy... this was the golden period for ordinary folks in the entire history of civilization. Even the Israelites who escaped slavery (Exodus) from Egypt really missed the plentiful food they left behind (i.e. apparently, even slaves ate very well in Ancient Egypt). This ended when the Romans imposed taxes payable in their hard currency (official roman currency). Note that some women were pharaohs during that period (including the last one, Cleopatra) and that their main god was the goddess Isis. Which corresponded to increased valuing of traditional femininity.
• Civilizations continued to become more and more Yang (values traditionally associated with masculinity, such as abstraction, promoted in all areas of culture) until the High Middle Ages when western civilization accidently balanced Yin-Yang for about 300 years (10th to 13th centuries); this is the time period when almost all the cathedrals (the majority dedicated to the Mother of God)[2] were built, when the first universities were created, and when people were as tall as they are now (based on studies of skeletons from that era) implying they ate well and were very healthy. One possible explanation is that Caroligian kings kept treasures for themselves for foreign trade and printed cheap coins for the ordinary people with their image on it. But, as they had a habit of collecting all the coins after the death of each ruler and issuing a new coin (with the face of the new ruler)... and taking a cut in the transaction (functionally a negative interest rate), people were forced to spend their coins as soon as possible (as they never know when the ruler might die or impose a change in coins). This fast circulation of coins increased overall wealth (as a result of money circulating quickly) allowing for investment in mills, tools, skills (medieval guilds), and long term projects like cathedrals and universities... In that period, rulers steadily increased the frequency at which they changed the currency, ultimately they became so corrupt (every 6 month), as to end that little golden period for ordinary people.... this was followed immediately by war, plagues and inquisitions.
• The protestant rebellion eventually led to another jump to the Yang side in Anglo-Saxon protestant lands as evidenced by the demotion of the "Mother of God", and the idea of measuring success only by counting wealth; the best way to help the poor was now to become rich because that wealth will eventually trickle down to them. Increased abstraction included the creation of a virtual Homo Economicus as the model for all economic decisions.
• When banks created bank notes (19th century), these notes were community currency, since they could only be used in the community around the bank... eventually this was centralized to become today's centralized legal tender. After the Great Depression, some municipalities created debt-free money and were wildly successful and equally quickly squashed by the central banks.
• Business-to-business barter rings have done very well in the recent past: 1/2 million companies doing 30 Billion dollars of exchanges worldwide in 2011
• Gift economies continue to represent 40% of the total real economy in the West. It is rarely studied or measured but it is vital to the survival of the Yang economy that mothers continue to nurture their children, and that people be minimally nice to each other. Although there are continuous attempts to monetize everything that used to be in gift economies, the upper limit has been reached and we are now seeing a counterflow happening in all sorts of ways at all sorts of levels hopefully leading to a return to Yin-Yang economic balance.
• since 1983, there have been thousands of experiments with Community Currencies in the world. The largest experiment was in Argentina following their national currency breakdown in 2002; for a couple of years, millions of Argentinians maintained a decent way of life by participating in regional currencies... but those numbers were reduced greatly (by the spreading of rumors of corruption) by the central government (lesson: always be transparent in currency governance and include all levels of government as you scale up use of community currencies).
• The degree of a society's respect for traditionally feminine associated aspects of divinity is an indicator of the extent of Yin-Yang currency balance of its economy; Having such a balanced dual currency system historically provides the best living conditions for ordinary people in nation states.

List of Community Currency systems

Other lists of Community Currency systems

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Local_currency
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Local_exchange_trading_system

Software for Community Currencies

List of Community Currency Projects apparently not off the ground yet:

• Ripple] by Ryan Fugger, recommended by Matthew Slater
• Zero Exchange
• Jubilee Net Justin
• Common Good Finance (see Matthew Slater's recommendation)
• Time4time
• meetorium planning a timebanking module (Lionel Beaudoin)
• using facebook for timebanking
• Time Republik (launches dec 21, 2012)
• mobile time banking app
• Time Bank imperative
• Principled Societies Project
• The Bank of Time
• Cronnection, time and objects barter platform

Other Compilations of Software for Community Currencies:

• freebase list of 17 software packages
• freebase list of 7 (annotated)
• freebase list of 49 projects
• CSXX list of 9 projects
• http://web.archive.org/web/20150423072515/http://complementarycurrency.org/download-software/
• Matthew Slater's 2012 list
• Matthew Slater's 2013 list
• http://socialcompare.com/en/comparison/alternative-currencies-monetary-systems

Gift economies = pure sharing communities

Other examples of gift economies:

• nature, wilderness
• Wikipedia, Appropedia, wikis in general
• the foundations of the net-neutral internet
• families, close friends, healthy tribes or extended families
• monasteries
• potlach
• food banks
• Burning Man

Open standards for exchange and transactions

Attempts to create an open standard for inter-software catalog exchange and/or transaction clearings:

Federations of Community Currency exchanges

• France: all SEL (LETS); http://selidaire.org
• Germany: regional currencies: http://regiogeld.de
• World: all LETS ; http://www.lets-linkup.com
• USA: all TimeBanks ; https://timebanks.org/ and http://hourworld.org
• California; Timebanks; http://cafederationoftimebanks.org/
• World Researchers: International Journal of Community Currency Research ; http://ijccr.net/
• Community Forge: federation of drupal using timebanks http://communityforge.net
• CES: federation of timebanks http://www.community-exchange.org
• and many national and regional timebanking associations

Community Currency Consultants

• John Rogers, UK http://valueforpeople.co.uk/
• Michael Linton, Canada/UK http://web.archive.org/web/20170413124410/http://www.communityway.ca:80/
• Margrit Kennedy, Germany http://www.margritkennedy.de
• Bernard Lietaer, Belgium http://www.lietaer.com/
• Paul Glover, USA http://www.paulglover.org/hours.html
• Matthew Slater, Tim Anderson; Switzerland http://communityforge.net
• Stephen de Meulenaere; http://web.archive.org/web/20180525054143/http://network-economies.com:80/biography/
• Stephen Beckett, Terry Daniels, and Linda Hogan http://hourworld.org
• Elf Pavlik, Europe; http://web.archive.org/web/20190405221935/http://wwelves.org/perpetual-tripper
• see also links in lists above

Tax implications

• If it is framed as a currency for the purpose of doing favours between neighbours ; unlikely to be harassed because time is not taxed
• if it is framed as a currency involving businesses or professional work; it is wise to pay taxes from the very beginning
• in France, SEL transactions under 1000 euros are not taxed

Connection to permaculture

• Community Currencies are included in a set of strategies described in Permaculture Design by Bill Mollison (section 14.11 p.535+)
• many Permaculture leaders are also Community Currency leaders: Margrit Kennedy, Mira Luna, Rob Hopkins etc
• Currency is an observable, mappable flow ALWAYS in the opposite direction of Goods and Services;
• Goal is to keep a flow of Currency within the Community for as long as possible (even indefinitely) and avoid erosion
• Goal is to go from an exponential graph pattern to a Sine Curve pattern where inputs = outputs, on average

Indicators of likelihood of CC success (to avoid the 80% failure rate since 1983):

• Constant Updating of the Catalog of Offers and Requests
• At least one Active Matchmaker (connects people offering with people requesting and seeks new appropriate offers and requests)
• Transparent Accounting and Governance (and appropriate medium: digital, paper vouchers, relationship to national currency)
• Respecting of the Commons (do not mess with remaining gift economies, and allow natural transition of CC to gift economy)

How to Design a Community Currency

• Define the Tribe that will be using it
• Set Goals, Priorities and Metrics to measure success
• Choose Appropriate type of Currency: digital (database, sms, credit card), paper (voucher, booklet, minuto), fungibility
• Engage Matchmaker(s) on whom the entire project depends
• Acquire appropriate tools (software, currency printer)
• Choose and advertise Appropriate Rules of Transparent Governance
• Use CC to fund CC ("Eat your own dogfood")
• Plan for Scaling Up:
  • Involve all levels of government, especially municipal
  • Engage Credit Worthiness Experts (i.e. Involve Credit Unions)
  • Get involved in appropriate inter-community-currency trading

Other currencies

Currencies sometimes incorrectly labelled as Community Currencies:

• Bitcoin: universal not local community; not backed by offers of labor or inventory; based on clever mathematics; largely hoarded not circulated
• Gold: universal prototype Yang currency for international trade, building up treasures (hoarding/very long term planning)
• Barter: (in the sense of a direct exchange without using any currency) not to be confused with Barter Rings. Plain Barter does not build up community; at worst, it is cliquish. The myth that currency evolved from barter is debunked in "5000 years of Debt" by David Graeber
• Federal dollars: backed by the limited assets of the Central Bank (Federal Reserve in USA) and more importantly by the power of the government to tax the people. (it can only be a community currency insofar as those taxes are used to strengthen communities in the nation)

References

• Wikipedia: Community currency
• Bernard Lietaer's english summary of his book "Mysterium Geld" showing the Yin Yang model
• Au Coeur de la Monnaie - Bernard Lietaer
• Sacred Economics by Charles Eisenstein
• People Money
• No More Throw Away People by Edgar Khan

Workshops

• Community Currencies Workshop