Creating Value Together: The Emerging Design Space of Peer-to-Peer Currency and Exchange

Paradigms for the collaborative creation of value through trade and exchange have developed over millennia. Thus, coins emerged in response to a set of challenges in barter and gift exchange. The development of paradigms for trade and exchange continues today, and is accelerating due both to crises in the mainstream global economy, and to new possibilities enabled by information technology. In this discussion paper, we consider alternative and complementary currency and exchange innovations, including local/community currencies, timebanks, crypto-currencies, and person-to-person collaborative economy microenterprises, as a technology design space for currency and exchange. We consider the consequences and trajectories of the rapidly evolving currency ecosystem, particularly with respect to research and development opportunities for CSCW.