Here’s How To Use GoodDollar Coins

Have You Just Signed Up To Receive Daily Basic Income? Nice One. Here’s How To Use GoodDollar Coins

One of the most commonly asked questions about any new currency – and certainly any new cryptoasset – is “how and where can I use it?”. All too often you’ll hear a vague answer about how “one day in the future” the new currency will be “widely accepted and used just like a credit card or PayPal” to “pay for your rent, utilities, shopping” and so on. We don’t want to do that, so here follows an explanation as to how to use GoodDollar coins (G$).

G$ As A Complementary Currency

At GoodDollar, we see things a bit differently. G$ is designed to function as a complementary currency (that is, G$ supplements national fiat currencies) to stimulate and encourage economic activity. How? Well, let’s dig into it. (And for more details please consult the relevant section in the GoodDollar White Paper.)

The reality is that many of us feel like we don’t have enough money to do or buy everything we want to do. That is because most if not all of our income is allocated to pay for expenses that are essential in meeting our basic needs: housing, food, water, healthcare, education, and so on.

These necessary outgoings leave many of us with little or no funds left over to be spent on “luxury items”, such as entertainment, non-essential goods and services, art, professional development and so on. It’s not that we don’t want to get a babysitter for a night out on the town or purchase a unique piece of digital art – we simply don’t have enough dollars/euros/rand/name-your-fiat-currency to go around. If this is true for you, the odds are you’re not alone – many of your friends, neighbours, schoolmates, colleagues and family members likely feel the same.

People “not having enough money” is a phenomenon that many economists refer to as a “community in recession” – communities where there are people, goods and services being offered, and demand exists, but the missing element is having enough money in circulation.

Liquidity In The Economy

So, what is the solution? When recessions happen on a national level, typically the response taken by national banks and treasuries is to increase the amount of “liquidity” in the economy. This is done by authorizing the printing of national currency and pushing that newly created money into the economy by way of central and commercial banks. The printing of new money typically corresponds to a reduction in interest rates; therefore lowering the “cost” of the new money. Eventually, the theory goes, that new money “trickles down” to reach the hands of the “people,” primarily in the form of salaries or small and medium business loans. A famous example of this policy is the response of the United States Federal Reserve in response to the 2008 financial crisis, and the rescue package to “bailout” banks.

More recently in the United States, in an effort to address the economic fall-out resulting from the coronavirus pandemic, the US$2.2 trillion CARES Act split the newly minted money: the majority allocated to corporations and companies in the conventional “trickle-down” approach, and a smaller portion directly to citizens in the form of a US$1,200 cheque and enhanced social benefits. The goal of transferring money to every American is the same: stimulate the economy by putting more money into circulation.

G$ For Your Community

So … back to you, your community, and how you can use G$. G$ is a currency that goes directly into the hands of people (no banks or other governing middleman mechanisms). It is intended to drive economic activity in a bottom-up way: people use G$ to increase their peer-to-peer commerce and economic activity, ultimately resulting in more commerce and collaboration that doesn’t rely on limited supplies of precious fiat currency. It is for this reason that we refer to GoodDollar as a “trickle-up economy.”  

G$ usage in a peer-to-peer marketplace context was piloted in a closed beta with 500 eToro employees in Israel at the turn of the year. The beta began by allowing eToro employees to log-in and claim demo G$; after enough employees acquired enough demo G$, they used their G$ to conduct peer-to-peer commerce and standardize barter.

People used G$ to buy and sell homemade birthday cakes, vegetables from the garden, used iPhones, tutoring, babysitting, exercise classes, massage sessions and more – totalling in tens of thousands of dollars of new commerce. (Read more about the pilot here.) Matching buyers and sellers were facilitated by paperclip, but any peer-to-peer interaction can be done on the G$ network for free – there are no transaction costs or gas fees.

In order to use G$ in this way, it is important that others in your community also hold G$. If the people you interact with (geographically in real life or digitally) also hold G$, then you can use G$ with one another to buy goods and services from one another, or to standardize barter that you may already do. So in these early days of our economy, the best way to make GoodDollar useful for you personally is to increase the number of people in your community holding G$.

Of course, as a protocol we are working to expand the features and tools that help you use G$ as a coin for commerce and barter, and just as critically, identify the key vendors and merchants that will accept G$ to pay for mobile-phone minutes, consumer health supplies, and more.

How are you using G$ to expand the economic activity in your community? We’d love to hear from you!

How To Get Involved

• Sign up to begin to claim G$
• Follow GoodDollar on Twitter and Facebook
• Join our Telegram group
• Sign up to receive the weekly GoodNews on basic income and open finance