SEPTEMBER 2018

#Opencoop:
Can co-ops develop their own coin?
Arthur Bock,
co-founder of Holo
Delegates at the conference were brought up
to speed with some of the latest approaches to
setting up digital currencies.
Community currencies expert Michael Linton,
who designed the local exchange trading system
(LETSystem) in 1983, has written and spoken on
many aspects of community money systems.
He discussed ways to develop a circular money
system, where money always flows to where it is
needed, providing funding for services that are
valuable to the society. This would mark a shift
in mindset – from an ownership to a value-flow
model, he said.
Matthew Shuttle, communications director
at Holo said his enterprise had developed a
distributed network to shift the financial paradigm
and create a new user-centric web ecosystem. Its
cryptocurrency, Holo, is based on Holochain, an
alternative to Blockchain.
There is no mining on Holochain, which requires
only the devices of the users themselves. The
architecture was developed using certain
elements from Bitcoin and others from Bittorrent.
The technology enables Holochain users to access
data on each other’s devices without a central
authority to coordinate it.
The aim of Holochain is not to develop
a cryptocurrency, says Mr Shuttle, but to
act as a means for communities to foster
economic activities.
Arthur Brock, co-founder of Holo, added that
Holochain wanted to be a mutual platform for
apps. “We encourage people to build currencies
on top of Holochain,” he said. “All these currencies
aim to address issues with flows – there can be
flows within the co-op sector. If we want to create
a ledger system across co-ops we don’t want that
to be exploitative.”
A similar initiative comes from Community
Forge, a non-profit organisation that designs,
develops and distributes tools around
complementary currencies. It has provided
an exchange platform to more than 600
communities to establish and manage their
complementary currency.
Co-founder Matthew Slater said the quantity
of tokens issued in a cryptocurrency is fixed by
the algorithm and the value varies, which means
it can be used for payments and settlements but
also speculation.
“In a mutual credit system – almost creating
money by buying something from someone and
extending credit to them, and then they buy
something from you, so you don’t need money –
all you need is a ledger,” he said. “This is a token
kind of money – a fixed quantity at valuable price.
“Many traders are reluctant to use bitcoin
because they don’t know how much it’s going
to be worth in the future. Tokens just exist and
we pass them around to settle debts and when
money is credit it facilitates exchange – I do
something for you but you do something for me,
too. It works better as a means of settlement.
Within the co-op movement we should be issuing
credit to each other.”
Open Co-op co-founder, Oliver Sylvester-
Bradley, raised concerns around who could
provide funding for creating a co-op coin, along
with developing an exchange platform for the
system and managing the project.
“The co-op coin or mutual credit idea is one of
the key projects of Open Co-op. Get involved,”
he told delegates, encouraging them to read
more about the project on Open Co-op’s website,
open.coop.
SEPTEMBER 2018 | 27