I design software and live in San Francisco, CA. My professional interests are in integration technologies applied the financial domain.

In my spare time, I research the future of money: how technology is changing not just the way we earn, manage and use our money, but how it is changing money itself and with it, our communities and society.

ServiceSpace is an all volunteer-run organization that leverages technology to inspire greater volunteerism. It's a space to explore our own relationship with service and our interconnection with the rest of the world. ServiceSpace allows our inherent generosity to blossom out into small acts of service for the community around us. It's a space to learn how outer change is closely tied to our own inner transformation. It's about changing ourselves, to change the world.

Regenerosity is a system for recognition of voluntary service, philanthropy & gift, civic engagement, trade, commerce, work, and any other contributions to the health and wealth of our communities. If you are a member of any community, whether as a person, as a non-profit organization, or as a for-profit business, there is something in it for you. As a person, you receive recognition for voluntarism, philanthropy, civic service, and many other types of community-building participation. As a non-profit organization, you receive tools for volunteer & donor recognition and access to untapped sources of support. As a for-profit business, you receive tools for customer loyalty & econometrics and access to untapped sources of working capital. As a school, you receive interactive tools for teaching economics & civics and for promoting community service. Everyone receives tools for measurement and analysis of social capital (their own and that of their communities) and practical tools to build community self-reliance and sustainable local economy, including community-based mutual credit systems.

open source currency project

The reason I blog is because there are not many people writing about the topic I'd most like to engage people in. Specifically, it is about currencies as social DNA.

You see, corporations, institutions, governments, and nations are in fact living organisms. This is not a lofty metaphor, but literal truth.

They have a survival instinct to self-perpetuate, they breed new corporations and institutions, and even as the cells within them are replaced, their fundamental pattern continues. And we are their cells.

My latest book, The End of Money and the Future of Civilization, is now available.

Order it from Chelsea Green Publishing, Amazon.com, or your local bookstore. You can also read a preview containing several chapters at http://books.google.com/.

My latest book, The End of Money and the Future of Civilization, is now available.

Order it from Chelsea Green Publishing, Amazon.com, or your local bookstore. You can also read a preview containing several chapters at http://books.google.com/.

This magazine is run entirely by self-organised volunteers who want to see the disparate parts of the complementary currency movement acting more in concert.

With no resources, we aim to have a broad volunteer base, each contributing a little over a long period of time, and not stressing out.

We aim to publish articles which are

helpful to designers and implementers of community currencies,
of interest to specialists and newbies alike,
from a broad range of countries and language groups
You are invited to take the pdf and print it out for free. Later we may offer some sort of advertising / sponsorship arrangement if we decide it is appropriate to take money.

Venessa Miemis's blog

What we commonly refer to as “the economy” can be understood on three levels:

Psychology – What do humans value, and therefore seek? Why?
Economics – How do humans behave in the domain of activities related to seeking value?
Technology – What mechanisms and systems are used to mediate economic behavior?
Mainstream coverage of “the economy” is myopically focused on the day to day details of one specific set of technologies – the markets and conventions that pervaded the industrial economy. But, these specific technologies and conventions represent only only a subset of the total universe of value exchange. The mainstream coverage has completely lost touch with the reasons why these technologies exist at all. What are the fundamental values that real people seek to satisfy?

Now a new set of technologies is emerging that threatens to disrupt the current paradigm, but that does not mean existing knowledge can be safely ignored. Those economic insights that describe fundamental human motivations will continue to be relevant in any technological environment. This blog addresses psychology, economics, and technology in an effort to better understand what will persist, what will be threatened by disruption, and what emerging technologies offer the most promise of producing real human value.

My web site is a catch-all for the strange projects and activities that I’m involved in. Friends who know I’m not good about sending correspondence or newsletters have encouraged me to provide a central place to keep up. 
The truth is that since my first web site in 1995, I really haven’t been reliable for posting much about myself. Now I’m being poked, prodded and supported in doing so. So I hope to do better.
I spend most of my time and energy on projects that I believe support and accelerate the harmonious evolution of humanity. We live in strange and miraculous times. Rapid transition and transformation surround us, but the outcomes of these transitions are still uncertain. I believe that humanity has much greater capacities than we currently employ. I am working to unleash those capacities for the mutual benefit of all.

If the next economy is going to facilitate healthy flows of resources and information which support people, society and the planet, we have a lot of changes to make. Because that's certainly not what the current economy does. We are building the means (technology platforms and protocols) for this kind of healthy economy to exist.
Just as people can create value, we believe communities of people should be able to decide what they value and how that will be measured and acknowledged. This means they have to be able to create their own currencies.
In order to understand our crazy and ambitious project, you need to know a few things about we're relating to currencies and technology.

Hawala,  an ancient banking  system that  originated in the Middle  East  and  South  Asia,  has  spread  around  the  world.  Secretive by nature, hawala  remains a mystery to most people outside  of the ethnic communities that  use it.  It is fast, inexpensive,  reliable,  convenient,  and, most  notably,  discreet.  These  qualities  have  earned hawala  many  legitimate  customers,  not  to  mention  money  launderers  and terrorist financiers.Since its transactions leave  little  or no trace, hawala  bedevils  financial  auditors and law  enforcement  officials.  It also  poses  considerable  challenges  to  existing  legal and regulatory  regimes  on money  laundering  and  terrorist  financing.  These  regimes  rely upon factors  that  hawala  usually  lacks,  namely  detailed  records, registration  with the government, and  connections  to  mainstream banking.  Accordingly,  some  law  enforcement  efforts  against  hawala  will  fall  short. 

The value of sterling may be plummeting as fears grow over the depth of a possible recession. But in the scenic East Sussex town of Lewes - famous for its bonfire night parties and bewildering number of pubs - a handy alternative is about to become available.

Next month, in the latest sign that localism is a coming force in British everyday life, Lewes will launch its own currency. In doing so, it joins a growing list of communities around the world attempting to protect regional economies and preserve the distinctive 'feel' of towns and villages.

The Lewes pound will initially be accepted in around 30 locally owned shops and a first run of 10,000-plus notes is expected. It is the largest-scale launch of a local currency in the UK since Lewes had its own pound in the 19th century and, in a coup for the organisers, the town's branch of Barclays bank has agreed to accept it.

Bernard Lietaer, author of The Future of Money (translated in 18 languages), is an international expert in the design and implementation of currency systems.   He has studied and worked in the field of money for more than 30 years in an unusually broad range of capacities including as a Central Banker, a fund manager,  a university professor, and a consultant to governments in numerous  countries, multinational corporations, and community organizations.  He co-designed and implemented the convergence mechanism to the single European currency system (the Euro) and served as president of the Electronic Payment System at the National Bank of Belgium (the Belgian Central Bank).  He co-founded and managed GaiaCorp, a top performing currency fund whose profits funded investments in environmental projects.  A former professor of International Finance at the University of Louvain, he has also taught at Sonoma State University and Naropa University.  

The only feasible future of money is that it has no future.
That’s perhaps a bit extreme: but unfortunately it happens to be true.
It should be clear to just about everyone by now that the money-system on which our current economy is based is in deep trouble. I don’t think I have to go into any detail on that. The problem is that not many people seem to be thinking far enough about just how deep that trouble really goes…

The New Economics Institute is a US organization that uniquely combines vision, theory, action, and communication to effect a transition to a new economy -- an economy that gives priority to supporting human well-being and Earth’s natural systems. Our multidisciplinary approach employs research, applied theory, public campaigns, and educational events to describe an alternative socio-economic system that is capable of addressing the enormous challenges of our times.  Our premise is that a fair and sustainable economy is possible and that ways must be found to realize it.

How many currencies does Germany have? More than one, it turns out. In an effort to boost their local economies, 22 regions in the country have introduced their own alternative tender -- but are they worth the paper they're printed on?

The Brixton Pound (B£) is money that sticks to Brixton. It’s designed to support Brixton businesses and encourage local trade and production. It’s a complementary currency, working alongside (not replacing) pounds sterling, for use by independent local shops and traders.
The B£ is the UK’s first local currency in an urban area and the fourth transition town to have its own currency, following the Totnes Pound in Devon, Lewes Pound in Sussex and Stroud Pound in Gloucestershire.

The Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee was organized in the fall of 1998 to expose, oppose, and litigate against collusion to control the price and supply of gold and related financial instruments. The committee arose from essays by Bill Murphy, a financial commentator on the Internet (LeMetropoleCafe.com), and by Chris Powell, a newspaper editor in Connecticut.
Murphy's essays reported evidence of collusion among financial institutions to suppress the price of gold. Powell, whose newspaper had been involved in antitrust litigation, replied with an essay proposing that gold mining and investor interests should act on Murphy's essays by bringing antitrust lawsuits against financial institutions involved in the collusion against gold.
The response to these essays was so favorable that the committee was formed and formally incorporated in Delaware in January 1999. Murphy became chairman and Powell secretary and treasurer.

Open money is a means of exchange freely available to all. Any community, any association - indeed, any body - can have their own money. Open money is synonymous with LETS - an invitation to come inside and play, as in open door and open house; collaboration as in open hand and open for all; attitude as in open mind.

The purpose of the open money project is to bring together and organize the people and resources necessary for the development and propagation of open money everywhere.

We invite you to explore innovative interpretations of money, economics and society which are resulting in a new way of thinking about our future. You will find  pieces of the puzzle on this web site to understanding the next economy.

REX is the Relationship Economy eXpedition.
The next social and industrial order has more to do with abundance and trust than with scarcity and stickiness. The key assets are trusted relationships.
Here we'll build key elements of the Relationship Economy, playing out what it means for business, culture, society, governance, education and more, because its effects will be far-reaching.
If you want to dig deeper, I run a private workgroup that is exploring this future. For more info, see "About REX" in the menus above.

An exploration of monetary and economic issues by Eli Gothill

the idea of a social currency. its worked on the basis of the value of your social media connections. 

In today's world the value of people talking about your product is sometimes higher than the money you would get for it. ‘Pay with a Tweet’ is the first social payment system, where people pay with the value of their social network.

It’s simple, every time somebody pays with a tweet, he or she tells all their friends about the product. Boom.

DYNDY is an effort at building a Pattern Language for Alternative and Complementary Money Systems to inform and empower grassroots communities with concepts and tools to overcome scarcity, instruments and reflections for the Exodus from proprietary money.