By Maura Stephens, Karen Edelstein, System Change not Climate Change
The get-rich-quick scheme, banned in China and elsewhere, is invading U.S. communities unchecked, posing as an “equalizing, democratizing” currency. It’s not.
By Eric Holthaus, Grist
To borrow a boxing analogy, if Bitcoin is an unceasing, ever-escalating zero-sum brawl, Bitcoin Green is a group of people with a common purpose standing in a circle and holding hands. Bitcoin Green participants are rewarded just for entering the ring — no fighting required.
By Eric Holthaus, Grist
It’s a telling social phenomenon of late capitalism that we are willing to construct elaborate computer networks to conduct secure transactions with each other — and in the process torpedoing our hopes at a clean energy future.
By Oliver Sylvester-Bradley, Open Coop
Enter David Shepherdson and Lisa Bovill, from Kaini Industries, who launched Hullcoin which enables people who engage with charities and community groups across the city of Hull to earn digital coins by volunteering and undertaking activities that benefit themselves.
By Richard Heinberg, Post Carbon Institute
According to most observers, the speculative bubble-of-the-year award for 2017—had there been one—would have gone to Bitcoin, the value of which soared from under $800 in January of last year to almost $20,000 by mid-December.
By Oliver Sylvester-Bradley, Open Coop
Co-op coins are not a new concept but the days of trading locally minted coins for a pint of milk or a loaf of bread are long gone. Instead, the rising interest in digital currencies and rapid increase in the number of Initial Coin Offerings looks set to make 2018 “the year of the crypto currency”.
By Kurt Cobb, Resource Insights
[Despite reservations], I find one aspect of the blockchain technology behind the explosion in digital currencies to be promising. This technology offers a possible path for decentralizing banking and finance and myriad other Internet-related services we've come to rely on from big corporations.
By Nithin Coca, Shareable
Can the boom in cryptocurrencies help achieve inclusive, cooperative growth? That's what Moeda, a cooperative crypto-credit banking platform seeks to accomplish. The group's well on its way. It recently concluded an initial coin offering in August of this year that raised $20 million dollars.
By Tad Montgomery, Resilience.org
The world is on fire lately with the exponential growth of Bitcoin and other electronic cryptocurrencies. While some see these as speculative bubbles that are tied to nothing, used on the dark web to ransom hacked computers, and profligate users of electricity, others see Bitcoin and its ilk as our liberation from nation states and their central banks. Both could be true. Perhaps more important is that the platform underpinning Bitcoin, called blockchain technology, and later advances such as Ethereum, have the potential to completely transform the way that the world operates.
By Niko Georgiades, P2P Foundation
Tools born from the internet, applied across autonomous networks and movements seeking alternatives to capitalism, are providing the infrastructure of alternative societies. In the last of our specials on community currencies and alternative economies, we showcase FairCoop, a self-organized and self-managed global cooperative created through the internet outside the domain of the nation-state.
By Eric Holthaus, Grist
If you’re like me, you’ve probably been ignoring the bitcoin phenomenon for years — because it seemed too complex, far-fetched, or maybe even too libertarian. But if you have any interest in a future where the world moves beyond fossil fuels, you and I should both start paying attention now.
By Aaron Fernando, Shareable
The staff at the nonprofit organization HullCoin has done something very unusual in the city of Hull in northeast United Kingdom. They've launched their own local cryptocurrency — programmed on top of Bitcoin to be issued by nonprofits and social institutions — as a way of combating financial exclusion and other problems that are at the root of poverty. Residents of Hull can earn HullCoins, which can be used at various places around the city. It's an innovative model. But how exactly does it work?