I'm very please to see your proposal here. I have lots of questions, because as fellow tribers will attest I'm quite ignorant of economics and money. Still I'm quite interested in complementary currencies.

My first question is why digital money? Many complimentary currencies, especially time dollar schemes www.timedollar.org/ are digital currencies. But other currencies find advantages in paper currencies www.transaction.net/money/ithaca/

I think that digital currencies make quite a lot of sense when the "region" the currency serves is an online community. They digital currencies make a great deal of sense when the purpose is quite limited as in moat Time Dollar programs. But I can see why on the ground, community complimentary currencies are printed paper.

The second question is why "fixed supply?" Most complimentary currencies networks want to grow within parameters. So the issue is not so much fixing supply but controlling for inflation.

As far as use of currencies it seems useful to compare and contrast the Ekopia scheme with the Ithaca scheme www.ekopia.findhorn.com/eko.html www.ithacahours.org/

I'll leave it there to discover whether my comments are completely off the mark. Thanks for posting Seun, nice to see you here.

[quote]I recently came up with a plan for a fixed supply digital currency.[/quote]

What backs it? What intrinsic value is it based upon?

Seun, sometimes it seems I don't think very well in abstract terms. It seems to me you are asking some fundamental questions about money by using the Mono as a model. Perhaps my problem is not just thinking in the abstract but poor thinking all around. In any case to try for some understanding I thought it might be useful to share how I'm trying to process your idea for the Mono. What is clear to me is that some of the fundamental issues you are grappling with don't really come up in my thought experiments; so I'll readily understand if you say these thought experiments aren't useful at all.

You are a programmer and Web site developer and an ardent capitalist in Nigeria. I saw this www.nextbillion.net/newsroom...b-of-data one of the factoids in the piece is that African Internet users pay 90 times what Americans pay for Internet acccess!

You're on the right track towards making the Internet an important part of Nigeria's economic engine. The disparity of cost and many other factors means that models of development for Internet in Africa may well be quite different than models elsewhere. Seeing your creativity, you're just the person to make this happen.

As you point out alternative currencies require a community of users. One of the hassles for African bloggers who host ads on their sites is dealing with the exorbanant bank handling fees to reclaim their payments for ads. The problem of money handling charges across boarders with an international community suggest a powerful reason for a digital currency.

I haven't thought this through very well but the outlines of a possible scenario come to mind.

Imagine that you with your computer skills know others with similar skills. And that you have an idea for a product beyond the Mono monetary concept, e.g. you wan to launch a Web site or something. In order to launch your great idea you'll need some capital. One way of getting capital would be to offer the computer services of you and your cadre of Nigerian computer experts. People outside of Nigeria wishing to purchase these services would "buy" Monos to pay for these services. Actually they would pay in dollars which would go into a bank account, but the people who provided services would be allocated Mono denominations for their services.

One of the prime objectives of this scheme is to raise a chunk of capital for business investment. Shares in your business start-up might only be purchased with Monos. However it's likely that as time goes on that people who provided their services paid in Mono denominations might like to opt out of the chance to invest in the business plan you developed. The rules for when and how they might do that should be firmly in place before any services are provided.

Using Mono-denominated digital currencies would facilitate people in other countries in Africa in participating in offering services to companies and entities outside Africa paying in dollars. But because the Mono is backed by dollars it would be an easy matter for companies outside of Africa to accept payment for services they provide your group in Mono denominations too.

That's sketchy, but at least I can see how the Mono could help reduce money transaction costs in cross-boarder service industries. I can also see how the Mono could useful in capital formation for a business plan.

One of the key issues you are concerned about is inflation. I'm in America and seeing the value of the dollar plunge relative to the Euro nearly 50% in the past years is quite unsettling. I'm not sure how making the Mono fixed will prevent the problem of inflation when it's pegged to the dollar. However within the Mono scheme that I outlined, it's possible to keep money in the accounts in Euros, dollars, Sterling, or some combination of currencies.

I noticed that Ithaca Hours are pegged at $10. One of the great things about that is 10 is an easy number to work with. That's a real advantage and suggest Mono denominated currencies be based on some on a number of the backing currency divisible by ten.