Open Money

Open Money.org = Project to develop a software and infrastructure to enable peer-based multiple local currencies.

URL = http://www.openmoney.org

Description

“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. The open money project is a work in progress - a continuation of almost 20 years of LETSystem development all over the world, two community way projects in Canada using smart cards, the Japan open money project, and, most recently, a community currencies server program, cybercredits. The intent is to develop an open money kernel - a core set of text files, administration tools and software systems that are sufficiently coherent and clear that further elaboration of the set derives from the core concepts themselves, rather than from the particular agendas of the originating writers and contributors. The open money kernel is to have a life of its own. ' (http://www.openmoney.org/

The P2P aspects of Open Money systems

- Decentralized: no need for a centralized issuer like a bank, which means no threats from a centralized power.

- Free: no interest is practiced because there is no issuer that makes a business of it. The only cost is the one of the infrastructure, which is a flat marginal cost, not an exponential one like in the interest.

- Peer-to-peer: the total quantity of money in the community is determined in realtime by peer-to-peer exchange. There is no centralized authority that determines how much, where and when the quantity of money should be allocated.

- Controlled by the communities that use it: the rules of circulation, credit limits, taxes, decision making processes, etc, are controlled by the community itself. Most of these settings can be configured via the software.

- Sufficient: because based on mutual credit, i.e. there's never a lack of money since it is created upon the needs/wants streaming.

- Holoptical: which means transparency between participants and access to global information about the system.

- Adapted to all needs and all communities: whether communities are based on a local territory or a virtual one, each community exists because it has a circulating offer/demand within it. It can be time exchange, objects, services, knowledge... in a competitive or gift economy. Scarce mainstream currrencies only serve competitive markets. Open money serves whatever market since it is sufficient and can be applied in any context.

- Connected to any "real" or "virtual" value: any community currency can be based on a "real" value (time, gold, kilowatt, kilo of potatoes, oil, distance...) or a "virtual" value (i.e. no relation to anything in the real world, it is just a unit accepted in the community).

"The term Open Money was defined by Michael Linton and Ernie Yacub. Open money is simply a medium of payment, a memory that something of value has been passed to another. One person's balance goes up, the other down. So for example suppose two people start with no money at all, so both accounts are at zero. One person then pays another CC10, their balances are now CC-10 and CC+10. Here's where it's different from traditional money: there is no requirement that that money exists beforehand. It is possible to go into negative and positive without contacting a bank. So that's it. It's really no more complicated than that. It's just mechanics from here on in, for example paying by phone, smartcard, paper notes, electronic point-of-sale (EPOS), or even SMS… The dedicated site is OpenMoney.org. TheTransitioner.org and OpenMoney.org are closely working together. TheTransitioner.org handles interactive community discussions and live projects, whereas OpenMoney.org possesses all material about it (technical, definitions, former papers, etc).(http://www.thetransitioner.org/wiki/tiki-index.php?page=Open+Money

Progress Report, 2006

Commentary by Michael Linton:"The cc movement is imo still extremely limited in all respects except potential. Presently it is highly fragmented and in many areas completely out of touch with any useful realities that might take it into the mainstream, which is where it needs to be to make any difference. The primary problems are singularity and insularity - too many people trying to do "the right thing", looking for some perfect answer. On demo.openmoney.org there's a page - cc mpv - that covers this, and proposes a fresh direction.Open money in some contrast is agnostic on the particulars of this or that currency. We are interested only in the propagation of a network that enables all forms. One might think that form of initiative would attract support from most if not all sectors, but it's an indication of the fragmentation throughout the "community" that no such thing is happening. Yet."

More Information

A talk with Michael Linton about his ideas at http://www.gaianeconomics.org/linton.htm

More at http://dev.openmoney.org/tiki-index.php , http://ccit.wji.com/tiki-index.php?page=ccDirectory ,

"You might also want to keep an occasional eye on the work in progress at

http://opencollective.org/tiki, which will be considerably more progressed over the next few weeks."

- Re-Inventing Money, http://www.reinventingmoney.com/: The mission of this site is to demystify money by presenting the best leading-edge ideas on monetary and non-monetary exchange. It is a resource devoted to the advancement of economic democracy, self-determination, and global harmony.

- The Digital Monetary Trust is an internet-based anonymous banking project, at http://www.orlingrabbe.com/dmt1.htm

- The case for `regional' complementary currencies, at http://www.margritkennedy.de/english/articles/index.html