3FOOD

Third Industrial Revolution Consulting Group
Alternative currencies, often referred to as community currencies, local exchange trading
systems (LETS), or micro currencies, began to take hold in locales around the world after the
economic collapse of 2008. Alternative micro currencies are really social currencies that enable
the collaborative exchange of goods and services to flourish in the Sharing Economy. As in other
areas of the Sharing Economy, people are bypassing the middlemen, the markups, and the
interest rates imposed by credit card companies, and exchanging their labor time directly with
one another.
But what makes this different from old-fashioned, one-on-one bartering of services is that Webgenerated
apps provide individuals with a mechanism to store and use points, represented by
comparable labor time, for the exchange of all kinds of goods and services, in both the social
economy and market economy.
There are more than 4,000 micro currencies in circulation around the world. Many of them are
based on the labor time one person gives to another in making a good, repairing an item, or
performing a service. The hours are stored in a time bank, just like cash, and exchanged for
other hours of goods and services.
Other community currencies traded in LETS are designed to facilitate the exchange of goods.
The WIR currency in Switzerland credits sales against future purchases for its members. When a
seller receives credit for an item sold, it can be spent buying another item from another WIR
member.
Community currencies are also employed, in part, to prevent wealth from leaking out of the
community. BerkShares, in the Berkshire region of Massachusetts, is one of a number of social
currencies that is designed to encourage local buying. Members purchase BerkShares from any
of the six banks in the region at the same exchange rate as the dollar, with a little extra bonus.
If a member deposits $95, he or she is given $100 worth of BerkShares from the bank, making
the exchange a net gain for the member. He or she then uses the shares to purchase goods and
services in local business establishments, which ensures that the money continues to circulate
in the local economy.
Virtual currencies like Bitcoin are also proliferating in peer-to-peer digital networks. Industry
analysts expect to see the emergence of thousands of virtual currencies circulating on new
digital platforms in the coming decades. Luxembourg’s financial services industry is likely to
play a prominent role in establishing the new virtual currencies or managing the accompanying
platforms.
Bitcoin and other virutual currencies have suddenly become viable because of the emergence
of Blockchain technology. This new technology, once perceived as a threat to the very existence
252