View all newsletters
Have the short, sharp Spear's newsletter delivered to your inbox each week
  1. Wealth
July 23, 2012

Are alternative currencies the future?

By Spear's

According to the Complementary Currency Resource Centre, there are 236 alternative or complementary currencies around the world

An executive office in Bank is not somewhere you might expect to find many anti-establishment voices. You certainly wouldn’t expect to hear the argument that the Bank of England — just a few hundred metres away — ought to give up its monopoly on UK money to make space for competing currencies. But Michael Mainelli, co-founder of commercial think tank Z/Yen believes just that, and he’s not alone.

According to the Complementary Currency Resource Centre, there are 236 alternative or complementary currencies around the world, which run alongside mainstream fiat currencies. These include local currencies, like the Brixton, Totnes, Lewes and Bristol pound in the UK, digital currencies like Bitcoin, and trade currencies like WIR and Ormita, which have grown out of business-to-business barter exchanges.

‘The last time we saw this number of currencies proliferate was back in 1929,’ Mainelli says. During the Great Depression around 400 scrip currencies were issued in America in response to money shortages, with similar experiments scattered across Europe too. Then, as now, the projects were founded on the realisation that one way of tackling failings in the financial system is to print different money.

I have investigated these currencies, from Basel to Brixton, which you can read more about in the next issue of Spear’s.

Read more by Sophie McBain

Content from our partners
Meet the females leading in the FTSE
A cut above: Charles Sanford on why HNW clients choose LGT Wealth Management
How the Thuso Group’s invaluable experience and expertise shaped the Spear’s Schools Index 2024

[related_companies]

Select and enter your email address The short, sharp email newsletter from Spear’s
  • Business owner/co-owner
  • CEO
  • COO
  • CFO
  • CTO
  • Chairperson
  • Non-Exec Director
  • Other C-Suite
  • Managing Director
  • President/Partner
  • Senior Executive/SVP or Corporate VP or equivalent
  • Director or equivalent
  • Group or Senior Manager
  • Head of Department/Function
  • Manager
  • Non-manager
  • Retired
  • Other
Visit our privacy policy for more information about our services, how New Statesman Media Group may use, process and share your personal data, including information on your rights in respect of your personal data and how you can unsubscribe from future marketing communications.
Thank you

Thanks for subscribing.

Websites in our network