The present and future of digital-community currencies: RAMICS 2019 in Hida–Takayama keynote speech

Abstract

In this paper, we consider what globalization means in the deepest sense and traced back the recent trends of socio-economic and technological changes in the 21st century, and try to figure out what is the new possibility of community currencies. Modern financial capitalism only seeking more profits in free investment creates such problems as disparities of income and assets, unequal opportunities, dissolution of communities. Modern community currencies emerged and diffused mainly in developed countries in the 1980s. They were expected to solve such problems caused by globalization in modern capitalism but never succeeded in terms of scale and sustainability because of high administrative costs and low motivation of participants. Recent digital technologies such as blockchain, mining, proof of work and QR code scanning that are used in digital payment and cryptocurrencies have opened up a wide range of non-fiat, decentralized private money and created new possibilities for community currencies. Such technologies have both positive and negative effects on natural, ecological and cultural environments surrounding us. They also have changed the basic concepts of a geographically ‘local community’ to a virtual ‘community of interest’ in value space. If we are aware of such aspects, we can make the best use of Digital-Community Currencies assisted by ICT and AI for creating a diverse, decentralized, and sustainable socio-economy. In diversity and evolution of money, the principle that ‘Good money drives out bad’ holds. We must find the criteria for ‘good money’ in terms of quality in a trial–error process through competition, because it is not as given.