Why community money could have a big future

In his 2017 book, “Before Babylon, Beyond Bitcoin”, David Birch predicted that we would all live in a world of multiple competing currencies.And communities, said Birch, would be one of the five main future issuers of money (along with four other “Cs”—central banks, commercial banks, cryptographic protocols like bitcoin, and companies).But community currencies have so far struggled to get off the ground. In the UK, attempts to launch a local version of the pound in Brixton, Bristol and elsewhere have failed.Bristol’s subsequent idea to launch a new app called Bristol Pay, which would reward community initiatives, is stuck at the funding stage.But there are still plenty of attempts to build local money systems from the ground up. In the latest New Money Review podcast, California-based non-profit and social entrepreneur David Anderson talks about community currencies.Anderson is president and lead volunteer at Simbi, a California-based non-profit focused on community and individual development. Simbi provides a web-based community platform to help non-profit projects find and reward volunteers. It aims to promote community development, mutual aid among those in need and the development of individual skills.In the podcast, we discuss:Why local currencies are nothing to do with cryptoWhy community currencies need incentives to workSeparating incentives from speculationThe Simbi community currency modelCommunity development and non-profit modelsCan community money compete with state, bank and bigtech money?