BONUS EPISODE

I spoke to Matthew Slater (@matslats) about an upcoming event happening at the  Commons Hub in Austria from May 22nd to 28th called Collaborative Finance that he is helping organize with the Crypto Commons Association, one of the projects part of the Breadchain Cooperative which I co-founded. We spoke about what Collaborative Finance means, how money actually gets created in the private sector, and what you can expect at the event.

To Learn More and Get Tickets to Collaborative Finance Click HERE

It is clear that crypto's promise to be or become money has not touched the real economy. An unregulated commodity could only ever serve as money during economic collapse. The whole blockchain sector, driven by speculative capital, has been issuing tokens and then looking for suckers to hodl them.

"Anyone can create money... the problem lies in getting it accepted." Hyman Minsky

If we start from money, not as a long-term store of value, but as a facilitator of trade and exchange within existing networks, then an entirely different class of bottom-up, private, decentralised, member-governed monies can be envisaged.

Since quantitative easing became a way of life, the real economy needs access more than ever to fiat denominated credit. It is a question not only of economic power but also political powers and freedoms. With a financial system designed to drive the majority into debt, the only source of credit we have is each other. The challenge therefore is to build social and technical infrastructure that enables mom & pop businesses to issue, circulate, clear and redeem and insure non-bank credit amongst themselves.

At the Commons Hub in Austria, May 22-28th, leaders and innovators will gather to share practice and progress on systems of collaborative credit

• mutual credit where members provide each other with trade liquidity
• mesh credit, which is backed along ‘trust-lines’
• voucher credit, issued by individuals against future products.
• multilateral obligation clearing in which a outstanding invoices are ‘netted’ out, to dampen cashflow.

Some are working with blockchains, others not. Come and chill with us as we break the DeFI impasse and explore new avenues of financial activism.

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ICYMI I've written a book about, no surprise, blockchains through a left political framework! The title is Blockchain Radicals: How Capitalism Ruined Crypto and How to Fix It and is being published through Repeater Books, the publishing house started by Mark Fisher who’s work influenced me a lot in my thinking.

The book is officially published and you use this linktree to find where you can purchase the book based on your region / country.