Plural Money

What is PM?

Plural Money is a design for community currencies that keeps value circulating where it’s created. The key features are:

• A community treasury funded by member deposits,
• A community currency used for trade and public goods,
• Exit controls that discourage extracting value to universal money like USD or Bitcoin.

What problem does it solve?

• “Universal” money promotes value extraction and community erosion. Dollars, Bitcoin, and gold are powerful for global trade, but they incentivize people to sell to the highest bidder anywhere, draining attention and wealth from local contexts.
• “Community” money suffers from a “cashout” problem. If a local currency can always be swapped 1:1 for universal money, people prefer universal money—driving the local currency’s value to zero.
• “Plural” money creates a membrane. By making exit costly, value stays inside the community while still allowing connection to the outside world.

How does it work?

Plural Money combines mechanisms to encourage internal exchange and discourage extraction:

• Trust Pool: Members deposit universal money in a shared pool and receive community currency. Rules may allow withdrawals up to a “trust multiple,” making participants mutually vulnerable and accountable.
• Community Membrane: Inside the community, currency flows freely. Exiting into universal money triggers an exit tax, which funds the treasury and keeps value recirculating.
• Internal Transparency: Transactions are visible within the group, allowing communities to set norms (e.g. encouraging spending on services or perishable goods rather than on durable assets that can be hoarded or extracted).
• Governance & Rules: Each community sets its own parameters: membership admission, transaction norms, treasury use, trust multiples, exit taxes, and other rules of operation.

How does this support more democratic outcomes?

Plural Money is designed to make communities more fair, resilient, and participatory by:

• Strengthening Trust: The trust pool makes members mutually vulnerable, creating real incentives for cooperation and accountability.
• Democratizing Value Circulation: The community membrane ensures that wealth created locally continues to benefit members rather than leaking to outside speculators.
• Encouraging Shared Norms: Internal transparency and transaction-type guidance let communities collectively decide what kinds of economic activity to prioritize (e.g. services, public goods).
• Empowering Collective Governance: Members—not outside markets—decide admission, taxes, and treasury use, aligning economic flows with democratic decision-making.

How has it been applied so far?

We piloted Plural Money at two “pop-up villages” in 2024:

• **Edge Esmeralda (California):** A first experiment showing the viability of trust pools and exit taxes.
• **Edge City Lanna (Thailand):** A second experiment where “∈dge markets” and even “fiscal stimulus” were introduced, making the currency more useful and valuable.

What kind of organizations, governments or contexts can benefit from the application of this tool?

• Local Governments & Communities: Credit unions, community banks, and related institutions can use Plural Money to anchor their deposits not just in local lending, but in creating vibrant economies that amplify the impact of their capital and strengthen community trust.
• web3 & Decentralized Communities: Plural Money offers a robust economic model for DAOs and other online groups to move beyond speculative tokenomics toward real utility and shared governance. It provides a practical application for technologies like soulbound tokens to manage reputation and membership.
• Prosocial Media: For large-scale online networks embracing “prosocial media,” Plural Money provides a mechanism of community-specific reputation that can be used to reward contributions, moderate content, and allow members with high standing to effectively “spend” their reputation to gain a hearing for their ideas.

What are the risks or costs?

• Adoption challenges: Without enough things to buy, participants lose interest.
• Governance disputes: Communities must resolve disagreements about norms, treasury use, or exit costs. For example, if exit taxes are too steep, participants may feel “trapped.” If too light, value leaks out.
• Regulatory hurdles: Larger-scale use may blur into banking or securities law.

What resources are required to implement?

• Seed treasury funds (e.g. small deposits per member),
• A technical platform (like the open-source ∈dges app),
• Community organizers to steward governance and stimulate markets,
• Clear norms and agreements to guide trust and accountability.

How can RxC support the application of this tool in a new context?

RadicalxChange can provide:

• Conceptual frameworks and design principles,
• Technical infrastructure (the ∈dges platform),
• Facilitation of experiments in new communities,
• Research partnerships to measure impact and refine models.

Are there opportunities for alignment with identify verification, soulbound tokens or other technologies?

Identity-linked tools can enhance Plural Money by:

• Ensuring fair participation (preventing sybil attacks or fake members),
• Encoding commitments through non-transferable “soulbound” credentials,
• Interfacing with decentralized reputation systems to strengthen governance and trust.