Stephen DeMeulenaere

= monetary activist and author of Pathways to Regeneration

Bio

"Stephen DeMeulenaere first became involved with community currencies in 1990, as a member of the Victoria Local Exchange Trading System offering gardening and painting services while studying Philosophy and Political Science at the University of Victoria in Canada. He was the Administrator of Victoria LETS from 1992-1996, then turned his focus to community currency developments in Mexico and Argentina, and then over to Asia where he worked with community currencies, emergency currencies and Credit Unions during the Asian Monetary Crisis in Japan, Hong Kong, Thailand, Indonesia and in East Timor after their Independence. His design for a Revolving Savings and Loan circle, based on a traditional Indonesian economic cycle, was implemented in Aceh as a crisis response to the Asian Tsunami, he consulted to the Provincial Government of East New Britain, Papua New Guinea on traditional currencies, and implemented community currencies in rural contexts in northeastern Thailand and central Java island in Indonesia. Throughout this time, he was also active with early community- focused digital currencies, starting with MLETS v1r3 and other mutual

credit software, then communicating with Ryan Fugger who designed the web-of-trust model at the foundation of Ripple, and then working with a few blockchain companies in the payments, remittances and stablecoins space. In 2018 he organized Blockchains for Sustainable Development at the 2018 World Investment Forum at UN HQ in Geneva for the UN Conference on Trade and Development. He resides in Bali, Indonesia."

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