Socio-Economic Inclusion
In a few years since cryptocurrencies have been around, we’ve seen many initiatives to increase Financial Inclusion (FI) through Blockchain applications. The first few use cases were based on remittances without intermediaries (like BitPesa) while the latter approaches like EthicHub look to increase FI by closing the gap among Impact Investors and community farmers that need financial capital to kick-off their production cycles.
Although these first steps are fantastic, the benefiting communities still rely on fiat economies to cover their needs; cases like the Bitcoin Beach in El Salvador show that communities are capable of thriving by operating their economy and local markets with crypto (BTC in this case). Still, they rely on the help of an external benefactor.
Other Blockchain solutions like MonedaPar attempt to empower communities to be resilient against external economies by creating Community Currencies whose value relies on the commitments of the community to accept the currency in exchange of the Goods & Services they can offer among them. Still, when a need can’t be covered locally, they would need to operate in fiat which threatens to discourage operability and resilience of the community-owned currency.
Solutions like GrassRoots Economics are looking to solve these issues by settling protocols within smart contracts (see token bonding curves) that allow communities to create their own currency (therefore their own economies) in a similar way they do to create their Community Currencies (like MonedaPar) out of the commitments within the individuals and the collective while enabling group savings to serve as collateral that would back up the value of the community currency there where there is a need to interact with the external economy. This mechanism allows, therefore, to multiply the purchasing power where fiat money is not enough for a community. See GrassEcon post-COVID response.
The enablement of these new kinds of Interoperable Community Currencies promises to grant economic resilience to communities so that the collectives can thrive by coordinating economic exchanges according to their own rules while establishing gateways to operate with the external world. Due to this, all needs will be covered while protecting communities from economic inefficiencies that are alien to them.
In a few years since cryptocurrencies have been around, we’ve seen many initiatives to increase Financial Inclusion (FI) through Blockchain applications. The first few use cases were based on remittances without intermediaries (like BitPesa) while the latter approaches like EthicHub look to increase FI by closing the gap among Impact Investors and community farmers that need financial capital to kick-off their production cycles.
Although these first steps are fantastic, the benefiting communities still rely on fiat economies to cover their needs; cases like the Bitcoin Beach in El Salvador show that communities are capable of thriving by operating their economy and local markets with crypto (BTC in this case). Still, they rely on the help of an external benefactor.
Other Blockchain solutions like MonedaPar attempt to empower communities to be resilient against external economies by creating Community Currencies whose value relies on the commitments of the community to accept the currency in exchange of the Goods & Services they can offer among them. Still, when a need can’t be covered locally, they would need to operate in fiat which threatens to discourage operability and resilience of the community-owned currency.
Solutions like GrassRoots Economics are looking to solve these issues by settling protocols within smart contracts (see token bonding curves) that allow communities to create their own currency (therefore their own economies) in a similar way they do to create their Community Currencies (like MonedaPar) out of the commitments within the individuals and the collective while enabling group savings to serve as collateral that would back up the value of the community currency there where there is a need to interact with the external economy. This mechanism allows, therefore, to multiply the purchasing power where fiat money is not enough for a community. See GrassEcon post-COVID response.
The enablement of these new kinds of Interoperable Community Currencies promises to grant economic resilience to communities so that the collectives can thrive by coordinating economic exchanges according to their own rules while establishing gateways to operate with the external world. Due to this, all needs will be covered while protecting communities from economic inefficiencies that are alien to them.
