Adventures in mutual credit

Amalurra, Basque for 'mother earth', was formed from a meditation group with life-coach Irene Goikolea over 20 years ago. Wanting to take their practice further, they bought an old seminary and oriented their lives around making it beautiful and offering hospitality. Fast forward to now, and there are several gleaming buildings, including a hotel, hostel, spa, cafe, restaurant, many spaces for meetings and workshops, a sweat-lodge next to a stream and extensive gardens.

There's been much attention, in the alternative media at least, around Amir Taaki and the Dark Wallet project which aims to make using bitcoin more anonymous. Taaki argues, quite properly, that regulating Bitcoin is squandering the founder's legacy and neutering the opportunity that technology gives us to create a really free market.

Perched on one of the foothills of the Pyrenees, in the Basque region, Lakabe was a tiny deserted village of 7 houses re-inhabited 34 years ago by a handful idealists fleeing the city life. There was no road, and no rooves on the houses, very little money for redevelopment, and certainly no tenure. Now there are 50 people, a bakery, a sustainable pine forest, and the village is 'official' although the property can neither be bought by the residents nor sold by the local government.

I was getting so lost that that I had to step back for a few hours and create this map. It was extremely useful!

Money is so much more than a means of settling debt or a measure of your claim on the productive wealth of the rest of the world.

If we are to design alternatives to money we need to understand not only the classical functions but the secondary effects and meanings which are not always recognised. I just jot some of the following sentiments which might be expressed when I give money to someone.

Many Bitcoin devotees decry modern economics with its debt-for-money and laxative easing which serves entrenched and corrupt political power. They argue that a public blockchain and limited coin supply restores honesty to money, and hence economic justice.

Stephan Tual, CCO of Ethereum project, penned this helpful article outlining some of the possibilities of the new technology. I recommend you read it.

I have in my possession a 'banknote' with your name on it, but am unclear as to its meaning. The words "I promise to pay the bearer on demand the sum of five pounds" are followed by the image of your signature, which makes me think it is a contract between you, the signatory, and me, the current bearer. So I write in hope that you might clarify a few questions which arise in me.

For those that don't know, Max Kaiser is an independent broadcaster with a thrice weekly program on Russia Today, and he appears occasionally on the BBC and elsewhere. He amplifies all the reporting on financial fraud and rages and sneers entertainingly and informatively at financial terrorists. His partiality, colourful metaphors, and defamatory outbursts make him not a very good journalist, but a master propagandist to whom the Kremlin is happy to give a platform.

Dear Hull,