Blockchain: Blueprint for a New Economy

therefore convertible to USD, EUR,

CNY, or any other fiat currency.

Similarly, LTBcoin is a Counterparty-

enabled coin issued by the Let’s Talk

Bitcoin media network to support its

“local” economy. LTBcoin is used to

transact incoming sponsorships,

donations, and tips, and compensate

outgoing listener rewards, community

participation acknowledgment, content

creation, reviews, and other forms of

contribution. LTBcoin functions in the

context of its own local economy, and is

always immediately convertible to

Bitcoin. 164 Other currencies could have

similar use in their own local economies

—“local” in the sense of interest

community, not necessarily geography. In

fact, one benefit of cryptocurrencies is

their potential use as a tool for managing

globally dispersed interest groups.

Additionally, Communitycoin like the

BoulderFarmersMarketcoin could

provide additional features in its locality

beyond just economic transactions,

helping to build community cohesion and

a more coordinated effort toward shared

goals. Community cryptocoin could be a

mechanism for increasing the resolution

of interest group activities by being a

more specific means of organizing and

coordinating group behavior toward

some goal.

Communitycoin: Hayek’s

Private Currencies Vie for

Attention

The explosion of altcoin and

Communitycoin, tokens or coins

enabling economic function in a specific

community context like the LTBcoin just

described, suggests that some of the

aspects of the world envisioned by

Austrian School economist Friedrich

Hayek might be coming to fruition. In

Denationalization of Money, Hayek

advocates a competitive private market

for money instead of an arbitrary

government monopoly.165 He articulates

other foundational thinking for the

blockchain industry by arguing against

Keynesian inflationary money in his

essay The “Paradox” of Savings, 166 and

points out the improved ability of

vendors to respond in decentralized

markets. 167 Regarding decentralized

currency, Hayek posits a model in which

financial institutions each issue their

own currency and compete to maintain

the value of their currencies through

earnest productive activity.168 There can

be multiple concurrent currencies. This

model could be deployed on a much

wider basis in the blockchain economy,

with the possibility that not just every

financial institution, but every person,

organization, and society, would issue

their own currency or token (which

could have a completely legitimate use

within its locality and always be

fungibly convertible to other currencies

like Bitcoin). The idea would be to let a

million currencies bloom; everyone

could have their own coin, or multiple

coins, just like everyone has their own

blog, Twitter, and Instagram account. An

example of this is Tatianacoin, a musical

artist coin issued by singer-songwriter

Tatiana Moroz on the Counterparty

protocol ( @tatianacoin). Just as

everyone became an author in the

information revolution and their own

personal health advocate in the genomic

revolution, now everyone can become

their own banker in the blockchain

revolution. Some groups of currencies

could and should compete, whereas

other classes of currencies could coexist

cooperatively as complements in

discrete and separate venues.

Campuscoin

Some of the most obvious communities

with their own economies for which

currency issuance makes sense are

business and university campuses. There

should be an open source, templated

solution for any university

(administrators and student groups alike)

to easily issue Campuscoin (e.g.,

ASUcoin). The same templated altcoin

issuance could extend to groups within

these communities, like DeltaChiCoin or

NeuroscienceConferenceCoin, to

support any specific group’s activities.

The Campuscoin issuance template

could have specific prepackaged

modules. First, there could be a module

for buying and selling assets within the

local community, an OpenBazaar- or

Craigslist-like asset exchange module.

Second, there could be a sharing

economy module, a decentralized model

of Airbnb for dorm rooms, Getaround

for transportation including cars and

bikes, and LaZooz peer-based ride

sharing. Third, there could be a

consulting or “advisory services”

module for all manner of advice,

mentoring, coaching, and tutoring related

to classes, departments, majors, and

careers. Recent graduates could earn

Campuscoin by consulting to job-seeking

seniors with specific services like

advice and mock interviews; freshmen

could provide counsel to high school

seniors; and former students in a class

could provide advice to current students.

Campuscoin could provide a

remunerative mechanism for these

activities, which have been supplied on

a volunteer basis and thus have been

scarce where they could be abundant. By

providing remuneration and

acknowledgment, Campuscoin could

provide a much more dynamic and

connected network of those who have

had similar experiences. In addition to

remunerative economics, Campuscoin

can be used to connect communities. A

fourth module could be a “peer-to-peer