Category: Currency

Civilisational Wealth, Currency, Democracy 2.0, Economy 2.0, Thinking Money

Physical Money

Steve Kelsey 19 mins read

Money Design for the 21st century

Introduction

The current fiat[i] monetary system is disconnected from wealth creation. The financialization of an economy reduces wealth creation by diverting investment from wealth creation functions to financial operations, where the goal of increasing money via the trade of financial assets for profit, subsumes the goal of creating wealth[ii] [iii] [iv]. These distortions interrupt wealth creation limiting the rate of a civilizations’ development and limiting the probability space[v] of a civilizations’ long-term survival. To maximize wealth creation, we need an alternative system. read more

Civilisational Wealth, Currency, Economy 2.0, Money, Thinking Money

Community Coin – a thought experiment

Steve Kelsey 10 mins read

In this thought experiment let’s speculate on what a civilisational wealth based economy might look like.

Civilisational Wealth is intelligence applied to base matter. Physics doesn’t have a definition of intelligence yet, nor a means of measuring intelligence as a physical quantity, and so we need to use an analogue. Although we can’t measure intelligence as a physical property we can measure energy intelligently applied to base matter. A unit of Civilisational Wealth is X energy intelligently applied to Y matter and is measured in Joules per Kg.

Work is the process of embedding intelligence in base matter. Work produces Civilisational Wealth. read more

Currency, Economy 2.0, Money

Community Money

Steve Kelsey 10 mins read

We are used to conventional money being issued and backed by authorities, banks and governments. However, banks are relatively new institutions historically, evolving from earlier methods of money creation. Banks as we understand them today are evolved from Lombards. Invented in Florence in the 13th Century, Lombards were a form of pawn brokerage where assets were deposited as collateral for loans (and where the assets were too large or immovable, e.g. property or land, promissory notes were lodged with the Lombard allowing the Lombard to take ownership in the event of failure to repay the loan). Private banks were prone to failure until the invention of the Central Bank in 1694 as lender of last resort.  But until very recently banks only existed for the wealthy. The common community had many alternative forms of debt and credit, many different forms of money based on community trust which operated successfully well before the invention of modern banking. read more

Civilisational Wealth, Currency, Economy 2.0, Money, Thinking Money

Thinking Money

Steve Kelsey 19 mins read

What’s wrong with money?

Just because something is working it doesn’t mean you can’t fix it.
The following is a record of my current thoughts on what money might look like in the 21st century if we leverage the profound evolutionary change money experienced in 2009.

I believe existing digital currencies are just the first step in the evolution of digital currencies that could follow many functional branches, a ‘Cambrian explosion’ of new forms and uses. Once the paradigm shift has been made from ‘money as a database entry’ to money as a piece of software, money can become an active agent in transactions. That paradigm shift occurred in 2009 with release of Bitcoin’s Genesis block, we are just playing conceptual catch up. read more