As you know, most of posts in Steemit are about cryptocurrency.
A lot of people have been talking about the difference between cryptocurrency and fiat money. However, before the blockchain became known to the world by bitcoin, there were several movements that came up with a serious consideration of the existing money system.
One of them is called LETS(Local Exchange Trading System).
People's interest in cryptography is in fact quite influenced by these movements. So I thought I needed a serious review of money, and I would like to post several article about money, especially local currency, in the next few times.
Local Currency Movements
Local exchange trading systems are locally organized economic organizations that allows members to participate in the exchange of goods and services among others in the group. Local Exchange Trading Systems (LETS) use a locally created currency as denominations of units of value which can be traded or bartered in exchange for goods or services.
Local currencies in Korea
Local currency has been issued to boost local economy.
"Gangwon region has about 40 trillion Gross Domestic Product, more than 10% of 5 trillion won goes out every year"
The problem is that the money in one area continues to escape to the outside.
This is the key challenge of the local currency: making it go around without leaving the area.
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No more outside people should take away the money in this area.
During 2017, 57 cities issued local currency and more than 10 cities are planning to adopt community currency movement.
Especially Sung-nam, Gyeonggi-do Province has increased the amount of local currency issuance from 10 billion won to 26 billion won within 10 years. From this year, Sung-nam district will show continuous growth of voucher issuance by giving the child benefit payment through their own community voucher.
In case of Pohang, Gyeongsang Provinces, the issuance of Pohang voucher is 130 billion won over the past year. Also they printed additional 30 billion won worth vouchers to overcome the damage and economic loss caused by the earthquake which happened in 2017.
Most of the local currencies including vouchers are issued by the Korea Mint Corporation to prevent forgery. Korea Mint Corporation issued $250 million over the past year.
Ithaca Hour in Ithaca, NY
Ithaca, NY has one of the longest local currency history in the US.
I have never been to the east coast.
Ithaca local government created a community currency, called Ithaca Hour. Ithaca Hour originally targeted the residents who lost their economic abilities so that their labor can be exchanged to the monetary value.
It is impressive that the currency unit is Hour. 1 Hour = $10
The biggest difference between Ithaca Hour and other local currency in Korea is Ithacash, which issues Ithaca Hour. Ithacash is a community organization where makes the paper bills, Ithaca Hour. By printing themselves, it is a decentralized method of local economic progress.
Over 500 business companies participated Ithaca Hour for more than 20 years until they face the growth of electronic commerce. In 2011, there were only few affiliated stores left which caused Ithacash to give the members who own Ithaca Hours full refund.
In the following post I'll talk about the problems of local currencies and the various attempts to solve them.