Scott Smith — Bitcoin is just the poster currency for a growing movement of alternative tender

It's not really about Bitcoin. Mentions The Platinum Coin, too.

Like the trillion-dollar platinum coin several months ago, Bitcoin has jumped from a technical curiosity to “mainstream” financial news. It has become an object of economic escapism—but the kind you can’t escape from. Whether it continues to grow as a phenomenon has yet to be seen, but the underlying curiosity tells us that there is growing skepticism about global financial systems’ long-term viability, and a correlated grassroots interest in returning to smaller scale, offline, more locally-focused systems of exchange.

Economic anthropologist Keith Hart, who gave us the phrase “informal sector,” maintains that the previously bold dividing line between “legitimate” formal economies (with their megabanks, registered brokers, middlemen, and recognized currencies) is blurring quickly due to worldwide economic stresses. In a talk last year in Barcelona, Hart pointed out that in ailing countries, such as Spain and Greece, the informal practices that have been in place all along have re-emerged as a new kind of “formal informal” market, recognized by many citizens as a valid option for work, earning and exchange. This formal-informal connection is being accelerated by simple uses of technology says Ken Banks, founder of a global initiative to promote economic self-sufficiency Means of Exchange. A much broader potential user base, with web and mobile access, can coordinate simple economic activities, such as time banking, bartering, and local economic action that brings buyers and sellers, or workers and employers, together simply—more like Craigslist, less like Amazon.

Bitcoin may be the digital canary in the coal mine at the moment, seen as a test case for “new money” by both economists and tech enthusiasts, but its not the only game in town. At the moment, these simpler systems of payment and exchange get far less press and attention from money bloggers, but if we’re lucky, they will succeed without this attention—perhaps precisely because no one is looking.

Quartz
Bitcoin is just the poster currency for a growing movement of alternative tender
Scott Smith