Community Currency: Together We Are Stronger

Community currency is part of Complementary Currency that have social, economic, and environmental advantages to the community or groups with a common bond. It is a tool for mass-collaboration to allow communities to cooperate better and for their members to specialize.

To date there are an estimated 250 community currencies operational internationally.

There is no law that says only governments or central banks can create monies. Communities can regain control of the flow of money and credit by issuing their own currency as a complement to conventional money, as electronic barter networks, debit cards, mobile phone payments or old-fashioned cash.

But why we need community currency?

The reasons may be vary but there is one common thing: it keeps money local. Which means that the circulation of money is kept within the community. Empower local people, local business or local community regeneration. Making the community stronger, especially against the destructive instability of global market.

There is also some kind of pride when it comes to the community currency and it builds loyalty between the business merchants and the consumers. Foster a more personal relationships.

Trust builds relationships. And relationships or emotional feelings of connection to the community, inspire advocacy.

But not all community currencies are success stories. Most fall through because they fail to achieve a critical mass of issuance and acceptance by businesses.

Bernard Leitaer, the designer of Euro and Chief Monetary Architect of Bancor, once said “This is where a lot of community currencies have failed. They have neglected to close complete circulation patterns, and as a result it tends to pool in particular parts of the system.”

It means that community currency needs to identify unmet needs and underutilized resources in that community, especially those not served by the conventional system.

This is why blockchain technology is the appropriate platform for community currency. It decentralizes the currency and makes it easier to use, no need for middlemen and with lower cost.

It gives full control of the money supply back to the community which in the end solve the problem of hyperinflation.

With smart contract, the technology will determine the total supply of money and under what conditions the supply changes.

Bancor Protocol is the first platform build on top of the blockchain technology that have the tools needed to create a currency and make it instantly liquid, with the option to expand into multiple tools later. It should be as easy to use as the other kind of money.

Using the Smart Tokens technology, each currency will have continuous liquidity while automatically facilitating price-discovery, without need to worry about the supply & demand of the currency itself.

Bancor also provides an easy to use interface for anyone to use the currency so that the community will have no problem struggling with the mass-adoption.

So let’s dream big and start local! Everyone has some skills or talents, and everyone can provide knowledge about the community, connections to the people they know, and the kind of support that every effort need. Because we all matters.

A community asset is anything that can be used to improve the quality of community life. Community asset could be a person, a place, a service or a currency.