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Introducing The Talent

November 19, 2014

(Left/Above: the logo of the Gelre, the first unit based on the Talent. Soon we will launch a national unit for the Netherlands)

Alternative currencies are a crucial component in addressing our monetary problems. However, the monetary architectures that are currently available are wholly insufficient to provide serious relief for Main Street. The Talent is the first independent currency model that provides all functions that modern currencies need to truly compete within the Dollar/Euro paradigm. Not only that: it is now available for immediate implementation at ultra low cost.

Interest slavery and the ongoing gutting of the West through the credit crunch continue to erode living standards everywhere. Small and Medium business is suffocating for lack of credit and demand in the economy, while Big Business is reporting record profits and claiming larger and larger shares of the market.

High class units, operated professionally by people who know what they are doing, have every opportunity to provide small and medium business with both the liquidity they need to operate and new customers. Alternative currencies are not only a great customer loyalty program, as people can spend the units only with the businesses who accept them, they also have the potential to seriously alleviate the liquidity problems of the business’s customers.

In hard times, alternative currencies tend to boom. During the Great Depression literally hundreds of them were operated in the United States. In Spain and Greece, hit hard by the Euro Crisis, have seen dozens of units spring up. Argentina has been surviving because of them since its 1998/2002 collapse.

Most famous is the Swiss WIR, which has been turning over billions since its inception in 1934. It’s famed for its stabilizing effect during recessions, when capital scarcity makes it more worth while for business to deal with its limitations.

Limitations of Alternative Currencies
However, the Alternative Currency market remains handicapped by major problems. Amateurism and lacking monetary architects of the units being the main ones. The currencies that manage to thrive are typically run by energetic people. The WIR shows how far even very primitive currencies can go if run by a professional organization.

This shows both in the superficial analysis of both the real nitty gritty of the monetary problems that we face and the political context. The field is dominated by idealists. Over the last few years a marked improvement in terms of political awareness is definitely palpable: say five years ago most in the alternative currency business were oblivious to that bankers behind it all, for instance. Nowadays this is no longer the case, everybody is used to ‘conspiracy’. But this creates a new problem: the disconnect between the awareness on the web and the stone age conversation that is still the norm in the mainstream.

At the moment the discussion about the monetary architectures that are available is mounting and that is indeed very important, but still much remains to be desired.

Entrepreneurial ambition is really key to make it all work, but this must be combined with level headed appreciation of the monetary and this combination has shown to be very elusive indeed.

The Key Challenge for Modern Currencies
There are two major architectures that hold sway: Euro/Dollar backed units and Mutual Credit based units. Most units work with the basic agreement that 1 Unit = 1 Euro/Dollar, meaning they use the Euro or Dollar as unit of account.

The Euro/Dollar backed units, for instance the American Berkshares, the German Chiemgauer or the British Brixton Pound, are created by selling units: A Berkshare is sold for $1. The Dollar is held by the issuing organization, the Berkshare is spent into circulation at a local business. The local business can spend the unit with a colleague or pay an employee. If at some point a business acquires more Berkshares than it can spend in the network, they can reclaim a Dollar for every unit with the issuing organization.

The great boon of this system is that it allows convertibility of the unit. However, the great downside is that there can never be more Berkshares in circulation than the issuer has Dollars at hand. This means that there can be no interest-free credit. Money scarcity remains a real issue, as the money supply is dependent on scarce Dollar.

Mutual Credit based systems create money as credit: participants, businesses in particular, can just get a credit line in the unit and start spending. The minute they do, new money comes into circulation. When a debtor repays, money is taken out of circulation.

The great upside of this system is that there is no money scarcity: people will typically experience an abundance of money and a shortage of places where they could spend the units. The exact opposite of the Dollar/Euro situation, where most have less money than they would need to invest. There is interest-free credit.

But this comes with a price: there is no Dollar/Euro in the bank to back the unit or to convert. And this is a real problem, because there will always be businesses, usually the more succesful ones, providing popular goods or services, who obtain too many of the units, more than they can usefully spend in the network and they will have to limit there intake, creating serious bottlenecks in trade.

The Talent
The Talent answers these challenges by providing the first fully convertible Mutual Credit based unit in the world. By providing an online exchange where people can buy and sell the unit. See here for a full breakdown of the system.

The Talent is a complete set of software and best practices, that is now available to everyone who wants to start his own currency. It can be implemented at very low cost and provides the start up with everything he needs to operate a truly comprehensive currency backed with high class methodology, incorporating the lessons learned with 80 years of experience with these units worldwide.

Implementation of the Talent comes with full consultancy for the starting initiative by the system’s developer, the writer of these lines.

The Talent’s proposition is particularly ideal for entrepreneurial people who know what is at stake, who see the clear business opportunity that creating high class, professionally run units provide for both participants and the initiator himself.

By implementing the Talent, the entrepreneur can focus on building the network and the organization necessary to run it, resting assured he’s offering his participants the best complementary currency currently available anywhere.

The Talent is the first unit in the world that provides everything we expect from money:
– It is sufficiently available (‘abundant money’)
– It provides interest-free credit
– It is convertible to Euro/Dollar
– Allows payment on-line and by mobile phone
– Connects both businesses and consumers and potentially (local Government)
– Implementation comes with full consultancy.

All in all the Talent is the first architecture that truly allows head on competition with Dollar or Euro in the marketplace.

The Time is NOW
Years of research and development have been invested in the Talent. It answers all the major issues facing those in the field today. The first unit based on the Talent is the Gelre, which is in pilot phase and for which we are currently raising funds for wider marketing. Soon a national variant for the Netherlands will be launched.

Implementation is seriously considered in the United States, Britain and Ireland.

Funding remains a huge issue. It’s sad: not so much money is required, but while there are Trillions available for saving banks, it’s very hard to get even a few thousand to save us from the banks.

However, we will soon launch a major crowd funding initiative, where you will have a hands on chance to make a difference in the struggle against the Banks and their Usury and deflation and for normal people looking for a reasonable deal!

Concepts of the Gelre, or: What is ‘High Powered Working Capital’?
Mutual Credit for the 21st century: Convertibility

32 Comments
  1. Ad Broere permalink

    en mag ik het in het Nederlands plaatsen op de FB pagina Geld komt uit het Niets?

    2014-11-19 14:33 GMT+01:00 Ad Broere :

    > Heb je dit artikel morgen ook in Dutch Anthony? [?] >

  2. Casper Honijk permalink

    Is this initiative in any way connected to the ‘Social Trade Circuit Netherlands’? If no I foresee that 2015 will be the year that ‘other (digital) money’ systems will compete which each other and further confuse the common man…. Why not work together? You know the advantages… we need a big ‘n’ to make this work.

    • No it’s not.

      There is only one competitor: the Euro.

      Cooperation is not a goal in itself: STRO is a sound organization who knows well what they’re doing. My motto is ‘let a thousand flowers bloom’. It is better that many people follow their own drive and build their own organizations. The best will thrive for the benefit of all.

      • Fascinating – is this like a culmination of your work of the last few years?

        Are you a programmer, Anthony? Or, did you have a team helping you with building the Talent?

        I’m still not sure exactly what it is, in terms of “a complete set of software and best practices, that is now available to everyone who wants to start his own currency”… Could I, for example, start my own currency in my small town? Forgive me but I couldn’t read about the Gelre pilot page in dutch to get more info..

        I suppose anyone can go and start their own crypto-currency (eg. ~600 crypto currencies listed at http://coinmarketcap.com/), if they know how to build the platform, so now I ponder what are the differences here.. Cryptos are usually ‘mined’, widely distributed, and traded for other cryptos in crypto markets, and some accepted for trade at various places around the world…

        But with the Talent, it still sounds centrally controlled? I suppose only well organized and honest currencies with a decent number of adopters will actually flourish, but in the end what’s to stop them from dishonestly over-creating and just creating mutual funds to give to their friends, drastically increasing the supply of the units? I suppose the goal is to limit the impact this would have on society by keeping them as small, complimentary currencies, instead of backbone monopolistic currencies.. Unfair/dishonest currencies would fail.

        How does the talent help increase money velocity? It doesn’t sound like there is any component of demurrage to help encourage velocity, right? Does it encourage people to avoid accounting and taxes?

        I’d be interested to hear what your thoughts are for marketing such currencies, and strategies for encouraging adoption. I imagine you’d have done a lot of thinking on this, as you are raising funds to do your own marketing. How many people need to adopt a currency for it to work effectively? Or do you measure it rather in terms of diversity of trade goods/services available to trade with the currency? I suppose it would take time for values to stabilize too.. Do you have any studies or information on the initial volatile adoption stage, successes vs failures etc?

        I like your ideas but I’m just a layman and it’s a bit hard to understand the pragmatic and realistic side of them, and the implications for joe buying a box of cereal from the local store with such a currency. I’d be interested to read a full case study (or even write a hypothetical one) in layman terms, to include answers to all of my questions from the perspectives of a programmer, a layman customer, somebody interested and knowledgeable about crypto-currencies, and a business man. Can I contact you further at an email address? I haven’t seen one on this site anywhere..

        • you can contact me at realcurrencies(@)gmail.com Stuzor.

          I’ll get into these questions, but they are many and I need a little more time than I have now.

  3. Excellent information. Thank you.

    I’ve been working on a local currency solution here in Texas under a different model and I’ve had significant opposition to it from those entrusted to protect the status quo as well as hesitancy on the part of retailers to adopt the currency for fear of being stuck with local currency they can’t spend. The plan was to issue time-based currency based on volunteer labor with full US dollar exchangeability. Retailers and services would accept the LC at full value for a minimum of 10% of the sale price. Taxes would be unaffected to the retailer.

    However, I see what you’re proposing as a bridge between the current system and a more ideal system. If we were to introduce the local currency by only exchanging dollars for local currency (LC) at a 5% discount to the individual buyer, and we enrolled businesses to accept them at face value but with a guarantee that they could be redeemed for 90 cents on the dollar from the LC issuer, this could work well. Almost all businesses I surveyed locally were willing to offer the 10% discount to encourage local trade. Since there is an automatic 5% profit margin for every local currency unit sold, there is built-in capital to start and maintain the currency.

    Once the currency takes hold and businesses are largely able to exchange their LC rather than redeem it for USD, the local currency administrators would have the option to self-fund small “volunteer” initiatives that benefit the community and pay those people directly in LC. If the local business community would trust the administration to hold a smaller percentage of USD for exchange, the ability to fund bigger projects would be realized.

    Furthermore, if the LC was issued with an expiry date, the old currency could be exchanged for new currency under new terms allowing for the eventual transition from dollars to a time-based unit, but that would have to be a very gradual transition. Ultimately, I feel that your idea is an easy “in” with local retailers and even local governments. The virtues of local spending initiatives are fairly well-known to the business community. The problem is generally how to implement one.

    • I think it’s a step too far to think in terms of taking over from the dollar.

      I don’t know how bit the town is you want to work with, but if it’s only 100,000 people, they will turn over billions a year.

      To even dent that would be a major achievement and to achieve that, you need a system that must work as fluently as possible with the current paradigm.

  4. Anthony, I like the way you think. Your monetary science is sound and right on track.

    Here in the back country of Arkansas, USA … I have struck a deal with a major municipality to create an open air market in the center of town … right in their main street historic district … with space for more than 300 vendors.

    The motto and philosophy behind this project is to get the community to buy locally produced goods and services … which is all that our market will offer … and to help incubate start up businesses in the community … to offer safe, healthy, fresh, homegrown and homemade products … in the open air … with street theater and entertainment … with the aim of attracting hundreds of vendors and thousands of local consumers to the heart of town.

    All the vendors will contractually agree to become members of our merchants association … and will agree to accept our group coupon … the ArBuck … which is convertible into dollars and will be issued as a medium of exchange … that should with careful management and planning spread to the other established businesses in this quaint historic district … as an acceptable token of credit … due to it’s dollar convertibility.

    The Arbuck coupon will be sold to our market customers giving them a 5% discount … and the vendors may convert them back into dollars … minus 7%. The extra 2% is subtracted as a contractually agreed transaction fee to pay the costs of coupon management.

    However, the vendors have the option of spending the coupons with their fellow vendors at full face value … and this is what keeps them circulating as a medium of exchange.

    In the event that the Dollars held in reserve begin to rapidly depreciate or hyperinflate … they could be converted into minted gold and silver coins … or loaned out to the community in the form of commercial and residential mortgages.

    If all confidence in the Dollar is lost due to hyperinflation … which seems to be mathematically unavoidable … we will campaign for the City to accept the asset backed ArBuck in payment of taxes … and thus provide the community with a back-up currency as a fail safe.

    If our “Fair Market” proves to be successful … we will duplicate it in the other major cities of Arkansas … with the aim of creating self-sustaining communities … and establishing the ArBuck as a state wide medium of exchange … ultimately backed by a basket of gold, silver and real estate mortgages … and acceptable in payment of taxes.

    I want to share this plan with you in support of your own objective for the Netherlands.

    To successfully create an alternative currency … it helps to create an alternative market as a launchpad.

    I am a fan of your blog and wish you good fortune in all of your noble endeavors!

    Kindest regards,
    Dugan King

    • That’s amazing …..You are incredible dude…I hope we have more people like you in India. Thanks . Guys like you are the need of humanity.

    • Thanks Dugan, I’m following the ArBuck’s development and hope you get it all going. I’m convinced well implemented complementary currencies will alleviate the plight of a great many people in the years ahead and will form a an important launch pad for further resistance against the Banks.

      • The best way to de-centralize a Central Bank is to plant the seeds of alternative currencies in as many places as possible. This will provide People with life boats to jump upon should the Dollar go down as the world currency … taking other currencies down with it. Every Community Market like the one we are building in Arkansas should have it’s own medium of exchange convertible into other currencies. That is what I see as the best solution to ending the invisible Money Monopoly that rules our world.

  5. vanavond spreekt James Corbett in Groningen aan de Uni en daarna te http://www.uurwerker.nl
    hier een videootje over alt. curr.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NFdU0dnpwYM
    + lijst: &list=UU7TvL4GlQyMBLlUsTrN_C4Q

    • Corbett talks about the Federal Reserve but completely ignores the Jewish issue. He’s either an idiot or a shill.

  6. Anthony, It appears to me that selling an alternative currency into circulation with an established exchange rate has not been challenged by the Federal Reserve … but as soon as one begins to lend money into circulation … where nothing is deposited as a reserve … then we are stepping into the zone called “fractional reserve banking” … a technical term for counterfeiting … and a practice that is exclusively reserved to Central Banks. Does this not also apply in the Netherlands?

    • No, you needn’t worry about that, also not in the US Dugan: What you call fractional reserve lending, I call Mutual Credit and it’s completely legal.

      Only when you start creating dollars through double entry bookkeeping you’ll get into trouble.

      Unless you have a banking license, of course.

      • The fellow that issued the Liberty Dollars in the USA … can’t remember his name … but he ran into some serious legal problems when he began to lend his notes beyond the reserve of precious metals he had on hand. Up until that time … our owners let him operate as long as he had 100% held in reserve. I might have missed some details about that … and if that is the case please instruct.

        • Yes, but the reason he got into trouble was because he called it a ‘dollar’. Ok, Liberty Dollar, but still.

          This is too close to what the Fed is selling. You must avoid all associations with legal tender.

    • Talent is een heel veel gebruikte naam.

      Punt is dat ik ‘m al hanteerde vanaf het begin van de ontwikkeling. Het was dus eigenlijk de werktitel en ik ben er gehecht aan geraakt.

  7. … maar omdat het woord talent het kennelijk lekker doet in ruilringen en noppens achtige lokaliteiten (van zw D tot Wenen, de meeste zonder lappen geloof ik), kan ik goed begrijpen dat je je er bij aansluit, zo niet neerlegt … elk stukje herkenbaarheid welkom voor vernieuwers toch?

  8. Dark Dirk permalink

    What about taxes ? If I sell good for gelre do I have to pay VAT ?

    • Yes, you have to pay tax over your turnover in Gelre. In euro.

      • Dark Dirk permalink

        At what exchange rate ? Is it legal to make payments with Gelre in your country ? It is forbiden to make payments with different currencies in my country, so if you pay in euros the amount is converted to our currency and invoice is made in country currency and I have to pay VAT in country currency. Is it the same case with Gelre ?

        • Yes, of course it’s legal! Otherwise it would not be doable.

          I think it’s legal in your country too (where are you?), but I think what you are referring to has to do with capital controls, or am I mistaken?

          A Talent based unit will get max 95 eurocents on the exchange, while the business accepts the Talent as 1 Talent = 1 Euro. If he converts back to euro via the exchange, his real turnover for the taxman is considered what he gets back from the exchange, not what he received in talent.

          • Dark Dirk permalink

            I am in Bulgaria. No money reform is posible here, because people are not iterested in money and how financial system work. They are just robbed from everywhere.

            I am curious about details of Gelre, that is why am asking.

  9. Bob permalink

    I must say I am impressed with the Talent idea, but a few things are unclear to me. First, one of the huge problems with the dollar (which may or may not be true of the Euro) is that it purchasing power is not only guaranteed to decline over time due to need of the fractional reserve system for an expanding base, but that it is subject to catastrophic devaluation due to the unsustainable levels of usurious debt now in place and expanding. One of the real needs of the people now is for an alternate store of value to the dollar. If the alternate currencies value is pegged to the dollar, then its fate is directly tied to the dollar. I understand the benefit of a 1/1 value at the retailer, but it seems to me that pegging to a fiat currency may not be the ideal way to ensure “convertability”. I don’t have an easy answer for this issue, but it is something I think people should consider.

    The second point I don’t quite understand is how the alternate currency can be protected from destruction through manipulation by the money power. I can envision a scenario where such a currency begins to gain in popularity to the point that the banking power feels threatened and they seek its destruction. I understand your idea of the exchange putting a floor on the value of the currency unit in (dollar or euro terms) but once a currency becomes widely accepted one must expect that it will be traded elsewhere as well. Banks could run up the real value of the alternate currency by creating an artificial demand for it by purchasing large volumes of the unit themselves to the point that the 1/1 retail rate is lost and the purchasing power of the unit actually rises higher than the dollar/euro. The only way to avoid this would be for the managers of the unit to increase supply of the unit to regain/maintain the 1/1 ratio. Once this happens, the banks will simply dump their massive reserves of the unit all at once and if the managers don’t have sufficient dollar/euro reserves to bu these excess units the value of the currency in dollar/euro terms will collapse. I’m not being negative here, I’m just pointing out what I see is the likely response of the banking power. Is there some way to prevent the banking power from buying up the units and creating a bubble that it can then pop?

    Thanks for all your efforts. I am very interested in an alternate currency to the dollar wich can be implemented in the US, perhaps on an individual state basis and hopefully expanding from there.

    Bob

    • With each new alternative unit put into circulation a Dollar would be removed and vaulted in reserve. By keeping only 25% of the reserves in Dollars and converting 25% into minted silver coins, 25% into minted gold coins and 25% invested in local mortgages … the reserves would rise in value by 75% for every 25% drop in the Dollar … increasing the value of the alternative unit.

      • Bearing in mind recent developments, you might want to be thinking about rubles instead of dollars, or at least making them an option!

    • I agree that people are looking for a good store of value as obviously their money in the Bank is at great risk and it’s difficult to find good alternatives, although I continue to promote hedging with Gold, as that is bound to rise substantially, when the reset comes.

      However, these are people that actually HAVE savings. Say the top 20% of the economy. Not my main concern and not what we’re addressing with the Talent.

      The Talent is to provide a good means of exchange (which is antithetical to a good store of value).

      I do agree that the Dollar faces declining value and this could become problematic, but it’s not really a big deal.

      As long as people use the dollar for normal trade, any Talent based system operating within the Dollar paradigm will be fine.

      Should the time come that the Dollar is replaced with another unit (say after hyperinflation), the US Govt will simply say: 1 New Dollar is 1000 (or 1000000) Old Dollars.

      The handlers of the Talent system can make the same transition, following the Government.

      The Talent imports all price swings, as the rule is that 1 Talent = 1 Dollar/Euro. However, from a monetary standpoint neither inflation, nor deflation are problematic to the Talent, as we only import prices, not the volume of money of the Dollar. This means there is always enough, but not too much money in circulation in the Talent based unit.

      • The second issue is quite vital and often asked.

        The answer is that the handlers of the Talent based systems do not act on ‘rules’ but on what is good for the system. They have full control always and must use this to facilitate exchange in the network and prevent exploitation and sabotage.

        For instance: while the conditions of use are very simple, one very major one is that both parties (member and administration) can immediately end participation without giving reasons. All remaining positions must be liquidated in that event.

        What this means is that the Administration can always force any participant’s hand. For instance, when they amass too much units. The Administration can then tell them to spend these, convert them or stop accepting, or face being kicked out.

        Computer attacks are impossible, as we will simply reinstate a back up, but denial of service attacks are of course to be expected. Unfortunate, but hardly deadly.

        The key thing to keep in mind is that participants have a right to be treated well by the Administration, but they have no ‘rights’ set in stone. There is no ‘free market’ kind of attitude: if someone messes with the greater good he deserves and receives a huge kick in the nuts. Speculation is proactively guarded against and speculators will either be banned or burned by the Administration.

        This is how a rational national monetary system should and could also be managed.

  10. Reblogged this on Jana Murray and commented:
    The Time is NOW! The Talent is the first architecture that truly allows head on competition with Dollar or Euro in the marketplace.

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