Human Money: What Is Possible – A Glimpse into the Future
The analog version of Human Money – like the Minuto – is already achieving great things. It brings people together, promotes local cycles, and makes us capable of acting. But paper has physical limits. What happens when we combine the principle of human performance promises with the possibilities of modern technology?
Doors open to an economic system that is as flexible, secure, and sovereign as we could hardly imagine before. Let’s venture a thought experiment: What does the practice look like, and what is possible?
The 15-Minute Scenario: Sovereignty from Your Pocket
Imagine sitting in a café or comfortably at home. You want to participate in economic life, but instead of filling out applications and waiting for approval from third parties, you simply pick up your smartphone or laptop.
Within a few minutes, you generate your own digital identity, which functions like a kind of bank account. This is not a number assigned to you by an authority, but a cryptographic key that belongs only to you and is controlled only by you. In the next step, you create your own medium of exchange. You use a standard template for this, define a securitized claim to performance (e.g., based on your working time or a product), and sign it digitally.
In barely 15 minutes, you are fully operational. You can immediately send this digital claim to pay someone who trusts you. What seems like a technical gimmick is, in reality, the key to enormous freedom.
The Benefits: Why We Need This
True Ownership: These claims really belong to you. You are not just a user of a foreign system, but the sovereign issuer and owner of your values.
Independence: You are not dependent on any institution. The only thing you need is your reputation. Your good name becomes the most valuable currency.
Incentive for Integrity: Since this idea is based on trust, a direct incentive arises to behave fairly and reliably. Those who are trustworthy and have talents will always be “liquid.” Scammers or unreliable actors effectively exclude themselves in the long run, as no one would accept their claims.
Humanity: We quickly realize that we need each other. Exchange becomes a social and human relationship again, rather than an anonymous transaction.
From Small to Large: Possibilities and Bridges
Often, such concepts seem at first glance like a nice idea for neighborhood help. But the principle is scalable to any degree – from barter among friends to large economic networks.
Bridges to the Known World To make entry easier, we can create claims that use established standards. This means we can define values that are easily convertible (e.g., oriented towards known currency units like the Euro) to simplify accounting and pricing. Thus, these Euro-claims become compatible with the existing business world without losing their human basis. One could additionally secure them with real assets (like precious metals or inventory) or guarantors to further increase acceptance.
Product-Backed Claims (Example: Agriculture) A farmer could issue claims in the spring that are concretely defined as a “voucher for 10 kg of potatoes from the next harvest.”
The effect: He pays current farmhands, for example, directly with these new claims (“vouchers”) and simultaneously gains his future customers, entirely without an external credit. He gains customer loyalty and liquidity at the same time.
The cycle: People can pass these vouchers on to one another and trade them. Whoever does not need them personally trades them further. This creates a regional economic cycle that is really backed by goods.
Performance-Backed Currencies in Large Networks Large organizations or transport companies (like a railway) could also use this principle. Employees or suppliers could be partially remunerated in “travel kilometers.” (Idea by Konstantin Kirsch)
This shows the potential beyond corporate structures: A network creates its own medium of exchange, which is backed by its own performance (here: mobility). It relieves Euro liquidity and creates a stable value needed by anyone who wishes to travel.
Active Communities and Regional Promotion There is huge potential here for municipalities to get creative:
Utilizing idle capacity: Municipalities could reward volunteers (e.g., park maintenance, neighborhood watch) with vouchers for municipal offers – such as entry to the swimming pool, the library, or theater tickets. These facilities are there and funded anyway; higher utilization costs the municipality almost nothing but creates enormous social value.
Regional binding: Future subsidies could technically be designed to be issued as a regional claim. This ensures that purchasing power remains locally and circulates there before flowing away.
A Creative Toolbox
As seen in these examples, the possibilities are enormous. The decentralized securitization of performance claims is not a rigid corset, but a versatile toolbox. It is about awakening dormant potentials and bringing people together wherever conventional money blocks the flow or makes exchange difficult.
Whether it is organizing energy cooperatives, financing neighborhood projects, or entirely new forms of collaboration – the flexibility is unprecedented.
What other possibilities come to your mind? In which area of your life are there skills, time, or resources just waiting to be activated by a simple and fair medium of exchange?
Breaking Limits: Creativity Instead of Tax Coercion
Perhaps the most important step is shedding our old patterns of thinking. We are used to thinking in terms of “money” and “financing”: “Who is going to pay for this?” or “We must collect taxes so the state can pay for something it believes we need.”
In the new world, we ask differently: Who is willing to give something?
We create value every day through our skills, our time, and our creativity. Human Money (securitized claims) is just the tool to make these values visible and tradable.
There are no limits to creativity: A village can agree to build a bridge by everyone contributing their performance as a claim. We don’t need an “investor” from outside if we have the skills and materials ourselves or can offset them against each other.
It is the path away from the thought of coercion (“How do I finance this?”) to the thought of creation (“How do we come to an agreement?” or “Who wants this?”).
The Philosophical Core: Money Is Information
Money is basically just information. It is the bookkeeping of who has performed what for whom and who now has a claim to compensation. Until now, we have let this “information” be managed centrally and expensively. But we can do it decentrally, efficiently, and almost free of charge ourselves.
A New Time of Responsibility
In this system of thought, an “economic crisis” in the sense of a “lack of money” is logically impossible. As long as humans have needs and as long as humans have skills to fulfill these needs, they can trade. The artificial hurdle (“We have no money”) falls away.
A new era is dawning. A time when no one determines from above how things are done, but where we must decide for ourselves. That is strenuous. It requires maturity. But it is the only way to true prosperity, peace, and freedom.
Objections and Solutions: Security Through Trust and Mathematics
Of course, objections arise when proposing such a free system. But on closer inspection, digital possibilities often offer better solutions than the conventional system.
“How can I trust someone who lives far away?”
This is the classic question of reach. Analog trust sometimes ends at the village border. Digitally, we use a trust network (Web of Trust): Information about the trustworthiness of an issuer can be distributed decentrally. An app can immediately tell you if someone is known and reliable in your extended network. Furthermore, reputation insurance would quickly develop. If someone has a high reputation (is not a fraudster), insurance companies or communities can assume liability in the event of a default for a small fee. This immediately creates a large space (Germany, Europe) in which claims can be used securely and extensively. You always know that the value you hold is doubly secured: by the performance of the creator and the guarantee of the community.
“What about data privacy? Does everyone see who I trade with?”
No. Unlike many cryptocurrencies, there is no global, public database (blockchain) here that can be analyzed by anyone to identify holders or track transactions. Modern methods ensure that one can only recognize the validity of a claim and perhaps the number of transfers. Deeper insight into who the claim originally came from is often only possible for the person who receives a claim (voucher) directly. The level of privacy protection is extremely high.
“Without a blockchain, money can be spent multiple times!”
Technically speaking, this is correct, but there are efficient solutions:
In online operation: Energy-efficient servers can check in real-time whether a digital voucher has already been redeemed without needing the massive computational effort of a blockchain.
In offline operation: If no internet is available, local security mechanisms take effect. Through built-in cryptographic methods (“mathematical tricks”), a fraudster would expose themselves. The mathematics behind the system make the fraud traceable later. Since one’s own reputation is the highest good, the damage for the fraudster (exclusion from the network) would be far greater than the short-term gain.
“But what if the power goes out?”
In a real crisis, Human Money is particularly robust. A mobile phone that is only switched on briefly for payments lasts for several days, if not weeks. Since the system also functions offline and fraud remains traceable later due to the mentioned mathematics, trade can continue even in times of crisis. It is thus significantly more crisis-proof than systems like previous cryptocurrencies, which are completely dependent on permanent internet infrastructure.
Is the Time Ripe?
The possibilities are great, the logic is compelling, and the technical solutions are in the implementation phase. But technology alone changes nothing. The crucial question is: Are we ready?
Are we ready to leave the comfortable hammock of external provision and take responsibility? The development of such a system does not happen with a big bang, but through many small steps.
Every contribution counts – be it through thinking along, developing software, financial support, or simply trying it out in a small circle. The greater the support, the faster the implementation of the digital possibilities can take place.
Whether the time is ripe is not shown in the news, but in our own willingness to make this small, voluntary contribution. Are you in?