Re: <nettime> P2P Gift Credit Cards - Gift Finance. Press Release.

[Dante-Gabryell Monson <dante.monson@gmail.com>]

If it does not use conventional money, but its own mutual credit units /
alternative currency,

then this looks more like a "Mutual Credit" / Exchange Network approach, for
exchanges between its users.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutual_credit

or perhaps some other type of Alternative Currency architecture variant :

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternative_currency

The project may be a honorable and sincere intention to develop financial
alternatives.

In that case, what troubles me is more that it seems to be a centralized (
database ? ) approach - but perhaps I am mistaken ?

Also, on their site, having an image with "Visa" on the card, and not
stating every time it is used that the "pounds" ( or the use of the pound
sign ) are actually not central bank pounds, can make it somewhat confusing
too,

although it may be possible that they use a banking transfer company such as
Visa to make their own unit transfers when purchasing in shops who have
access to Visa/Mastercard readers.

They explain their alternative monetary architecture on :

http://p2pgiftcredit.com/about.php

There are many different types of monetary architectures that can be
imagined and implemented, some fiat, others guaranteed by production, some
of them centralized, others more decentralized, etc

Often the issue is one of reaching a sufficiently large pool / critical mass
of users who trust each other and want to do exchanges while using the
currency as tool.

Basically, I presume its about creating social networks between people that
trust each other sufficiently as to enable exchanges.

Personally, I would also need to have access to more details concerning the
currency, its members, etc before joining it.

I might as well for now use other distributed and open source clearing
tools,
such as
http://ripplepay.com/  ; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ripple_monetary_system (
software :  http://sourceforge.net/projects/ripple/ )
and/or use any type of units of my own choosing, including for example
http://www.bitcoin.org/

By the way, an example of an existing and rather large economic circle - the
"WIR", in Switzerland :

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WIR_Bank

Just in case some of us are not accustomed to alternative currencies and may
want to have an introduction,
I suggest reading "The Future of Money" by Bernard Lietaer :

http://www.transaction.net/money/book/index.html


On Tue, Dec 21, 2010 at 8:52 AM, Paolo Cirio <info@paolocirio.net> wrote:

> Press Release, 20 December 2010. London.
>
> P2P Gift Credit Cards - Gift Finance.
> http://P2PGiftCredit.com
>
> This project proposes an alternative economy based on Peer-to-Peer
> architecture for a more equal sharing of wealth in society. It offers
> an innovative participative system using counterfeit virtual money.
 <...>


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