Why You cannot spend Trust as a Currency

In a world that is shaken by a systemic crisis, new value models emerge. In this world, the mainstream currency doesn’t work well anymore: it has embedded interest, it’s hyper-controlled, it’s scarce. Day after day, we realize we need a new currency: one that is no more than a language. We need a currency that helps everyone to share.

The so-called sharing economy is in fact considered by many as the “next big thing” and it’s growing everywhere: the monetary crisis and the emergence of alternative non-monetary systems, the crisis of consumption, the need for cooperation over competition. These are all elements to consider. All this changes created the ground for the collaborative, sharing economy to thrive.

The sharing economy though, has one clear limitation, that at the same time could be considered its greatest asset: it is made of several different communities (made by peers sharing a common reason) rather than being an intact social bloc.

- Connecting communities through a Currency

Just to give some examples: the participants to the couchsurfing community share the passion to discover the world through local people; carpooling users just share the need to travel at lower costs.
It’s so easy to understand how the sharing economy is the size of the tribe: letting these tribes talk, interact and share on a global scale, is our mission.

Many claim that the tools to unify these communities will be reputation and trust. In a recent post on Wired, Rachel Botsman (author of the novel book about collaborative consumption “What’s mine is yours”) says:

“Slivers of data that have until now lived in secluded isolation online will be available in one place. Answers on Quora, reviews on TripAdvisor, comments on Amazon, feedback on Airbnb, videos posted on YouTube, social groups joined, or presentations on SlideShare; as well as a history and real-time stream of who has trusted you, when, where and why. The whole package will come together in your personal reputation dashboard, painting a comprehensive, definitive picture of your intentions, capabilities and values.”

Although we agree that trust is a credible social credit indicator, we are not as convinced that it can be operated as a currency and therefore become “spendable”.  

Our friend Juho from Sharetribe wrote few months ago on Shareable this interesting post you should read. There’s an incredible list of question marks that show clearly how trust as a tool could be unfit to facilitate the federation and integration of diverse communities. He even stresses the point that sometimes arbitrary values - as for example the Klout score - have “no clear meaning to most people.”

While trust and reputation concern the quality of the experience, what instead impacts availability and access is currency. In other words, currency is the enabler of the exchange while reputation comes into play when choosing. If money is too scarce, being trusted does not solve the access issue. In slightly more technical terms, trust is a great store of value while a currency (Dropis in this case) shall be only a medium of exchange.

- The need for a frictionless, alternative currency infrastructure for sharing

There is thus a well-defined social need for a currency that is:   

• designed to let any meaningful value exchanges take place
• not mixable with mainstream currency to avoid the dilution of tangible contributed value (in fact you cannot sell or buy Dropis)   
• frictionless enough to give immediate access to those who want to start adopting it

A simple, powerful, and easy to integrate currency, credit and payment system. That’s why we created Dropis.

Our integration infrastructure includes balances, wallets, transactions and all components needed to ensure that the economies generated inside specific communities can be interconnected - by speaking the same language - with the rest of the sharing world.

If you want to know more about Dropis, if you are willing to share your views and contribute to our continuous co-design process please get in touch!

Let’s build the currency of sharing. Together.

Post by @meedabyte - Follow us at @sharedropis to keep in touch!