Virtual Money for Virtual Communities

What NEED does this meet?

Anybody who doesn’t have ‘enough money’ can benefit from ‘complementary money’. It is created by recording the value of a transaction between mutually consenting adults.

It can also be created as ‘shadow money’, e.g. for every transaction in your Paypal account you can get the same amount in virtual.

What is the APPROACH?

The model is www.barter-software.com but it lacks exchanges between systems. The ‘universal exchange currency’ needs to be TIME.

The challenge is to embed this mechanism into your existing sites.

It is also possible to generate ‘virtuals’ by clicking: to reward linking with sites on related issues and trading for ‘virtuals’ is a way of creating ‘money’.

What are the BENEFITS to people?

Having the FEELING as well as the reality of ALWAYS having the money to pay for what you want.

What is the COMPETITION?

LETS (Local Exchange Trade Systems) are the ‘amateur’ versions while ‘barter exchanges’ are the professional b2b versions.

Embedding the ‘political is financial’ attitude into the ring of MySociety sites will hopefully use all possible techniques to create ‘virtual community currency’ for virtual communities.

What BUDGETS & LOGISTICS are required?

No idea.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 4th, 2006 at 6:38pm and is filed under Proposals 2006. Follow responses to this entry (RSS2 feed). Both comments and pings are currently closed.