[ExI] Bottom-up currencies

[Emlyn]

It strikes me that there are many circumstances (eg: geographic or
cultural communities) where the ability to form a special purpose
currency would be really useful. Maybe when culturally cohesive groups
are too big for gift economies, and scarce resources are in play, and
there is some reason that government money isn't a good choice? The
disincentive though is that it can be difficult to interact with other
currencies (eg: regular money!).

So, a couple of things:

1 - Where is the theory on this stuff; where should I begin to look? I
am guessing there's some useful libertarian writing on this, for
example.

2 - If it is useful, it seems that it's something that needs a
technological platform to make it really go. If you can set up a
currency somewhere trusted, which will enforce your local rules, track
who has how much of what, and provide the ability to for people to
make trades between currencies, with copious APIs for third parties to
work with it, then you have the basis for a decentralisation of
currency that could be really interesting.

Other thoughts?

-- 
Emlyn

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