The Great Recession has nominally ended but faith in the economy remains to be restored. Shaken by the experiences of previous years, many Americans have begun to seek alternatives to the standard U.S. dollar, citing the advantages of autonomy and insulation from the national market. Of these non-standard currencies, the one that has received by far the most attention from the press has been Bitcoin, due to the controversy surrounding its facilitation of less than legal online transactions.

Less well-known but equally noteworthy are the numerous local currencies that have begun to crop up across the United States. Whether existing in physical form as bills and coins or purely in electronic denominations, they are circulated only locally and are accepted as forms of payment by neighborhood establishments. Common arguments for their existence are centered around the importance of the community. The inability for their value to be transferred to places outside of their point of origin serves to both encourage investment in local businesses and buffer the local economy from volatility on the national level. Such currencies can also prove to be a boon for those unemployed by increasing the purchasing power of individuals and thus encouraging the hiring of more people. Other advantages differ with the ways in which the currency is implemented. Japan, for example, has a form of currency called the “Fureai kippu,” which can only be obtained by assisting the elderly; accumulated credits are stored until the owner is a senior citizen, at which point he or she can use them to pay for services rendered by other elderly or younger individuals. Time-based monetary systems also exist, in which hours of labor are traded within the community. The premise of these two latter cases in particular is that apart from serving as an economic device, such currencies also are valuable civic tools that encourage members of the community, especially youth, to interact with their neighbors and take up civic roles and duties.

Having a community currency available as a supplement to federal dollars therefore provides opportunities for a myriad number of ways in which to encourage civic involvement, cohesion among neighbors, and the growth of small businesses. However, it’s unlikely that any one implementation of an alternative monetary system would satisfy the various needs of many different communities. I therefore propose a platform that would allow local governments and communities to easily create and distribute their own form of electronic currency. The specifics of how the currency is backed and generated, as well as the terms of exchange between it and federal currency, would be left open to allow for adaptation to the unique circumstances that face each town. In its most simple form the tool would be an app that serves as an e-wallet and indicates stores and job listings that deal with the currency. A more complicated and holistic version would consist of a suite of tools to allow for the basic infrastructure of the system to take hold. Possibilities would include QR codes that could be printed onto an ID or paper that would identify wallets and allow money to be exchanged from individual to individual or a range pre-coded options dealing with how the currency is generated (hours of labor, exchanged from federal currency, etc). With the success of some current models such as the BerkShares model, many communities could hopefully develop alternative spheres of exchange that satisfy both economic and social needs.