Why Your Town Needs Its Own Currency

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Let us surprise This week on the Andrew Yang Podcast.

And I had this question, could we possibly network independent businesses in a way where they have the combined network effects of a major chain? Could there be a community anchor instead of a retail anchor? And, uh, That set me on a path of questions that set me on a different path than usual.

It is my pleasure to welcome to the podcast founder at Local Fund, serial entrepreneur, one of the biggest advocates for local currencies outside of myself, of course, DW Farrell.

Welcome, DW.

Thank you so much.

So you and I were connected because of our shared passion for local currencies. People who are deep into me know that I think this is one of the answers. So what is your origin story to become one of the world's foremost pioneers in this space?

Well, local currency predates me, but my career started more toward fintech before we called it that. In the early 2000s and realizing that local currency, the printed form, was being used and adopted was by happenstance. I was at my stepsister's wedding in the Berkshire area of Massachusetts.

Oh, the Berkshires. Yeah, I had one of like the biggest Local currencies. Continue.

Yeah. And, you know, staying with some locals and, and they explained to me how it works and that, you know, the community banks participate. You can take in $100 in USD and they'll give you $105 in BRK shares. And so that was the real-world experience. And coming to that from a standpoint of wanting to really use financial technology and disrupt what the status quo is. It was something I wanted to learn a lot more about.

So you have this in-person experience at your sister's wedding, BerkShares, which is one of the most widely used or publicized local currency rollouts in the country. What happened then?

Yeah, so around that time was working with some big companies doing large e-commerce websites and on the tech side, and also realizing the kind of network effects that happen in fintech and in technology generally. aren't being leveraged in a way that helps the small business down the street. And so, I would go literally to local businesses, ones I cared about, and say, hey, can I help out? Can I help you move to getting online, getting e-commerce set up? And just to see if there's a way to benefit my community with my skills. And at the time, I was also finishing up as a professor for about 7 years and realizing, you know, I didn't want to focus on an academic career, but I wanted to really, you know, rethink how we can change economies, but use those network effects, use technology. So, it was more of a question and a challenge to myself. You know, and I decided I wanted to not work with the big companies anymore. And I had this question, could we possibly network independent businesses in a way where they have the combined network effects of a major chain? Could there be a community anchor instead of a retail anchor? And that set me on a path of questions that, that, uh, um, you know, we'll talk about more, but, uh, certainly had the right questions that, um, set me on a different path than usual.

Well, certainly I think a lot of people love the notion of locally owned small businesses being able to use, uh, cutting-edge tools, enjoying more of the value. So if you reflect on, you know, even since 2008, um, when you first had the Berkshire experience. Um, so Walmart comes along and does a number on mainstream retail, uh, and then there's like this, um, Shop Small American Express thing that happens where it's like, oh, you should really try and support your local, uh, shop owners. And we all, you know, agree with that. We feel good about that. But I feel like the local shop owners, uh, are disappearing more and more, especially now After Walmart came Amazon. And so now if you do have a little mom-and-pop shop, I feel like you're either in a really affluent area or it's, you know, just like a difficult landscape. And to the extent that there are different things to be done for that local business, which I see as like the lifeblood of a lot of these communities too, it's one reason why I think people are getting saddened by the state of affairs that more and more value is floating up to the cloud. I mean, we don't eat in restaurants as much now. We just hit the button and it gets ferried to us in various ways. We don't see each other in real life. So there are a bunch of forces. And one thing that you're describing is, hey, small business owner, you're probably bad at e-commerce. Maybe I can help you with that.

Yeah.

And then there's another aspect of it too. It's like, hey, small business, you're probably bad at social media. Someone should help you with that. And then it's like, oh, now AI's coming. Hey, small business owner, how do you use that? And let me say that the small business owner doesn't have time for most any of those things because the small business owner is just trying to make it work. They wake up, they open the store, they, you know, like deal with staffing issues, they deal with customers, deal with vendors, deal with suppliers. And then after that, when they might get home late at night or something, being like, hey, you know what you should really do? Bone up on these tools or like do these social media posts because eventually it can pay off for you. But it's like a lot of presence, it's a lot of work. And you either need to be the kind of human being that naturally doubles as a content creator, which is not, you know, good for your mental health. Or you need to hire a full-fledged human to be like, you're gonna be my socials person or like, or, Hire an agency and the agency will give you a fractional human, more or less. They'll be like, hey, here's your account manager. And like, you're not paying enough for this to be worthwhile. So they're gonna, you know, give you 1/4 or 1/5 of their time. But it's still going to be investment on the part of the small business. But if you're a, you know, a local florist or a local hardware store, like maybe just no one gives a shit about your socials. Yeah.

Yeah, well, so Don Tapscott wrote a book in 1999 called Growing Up Digital. And he talks about 2 groups. One is the digital immigrant that didn't grow up with all this stuff. And then the digital native. It's the lingua franca for anybody who has a birthday after 1995, right? And so, Seeing that in real life with my own kids, I have five, and and also running programs where during COVID we had a county that was willing to pair up small businesses with a program run by the county for at-risk youth and have. The youth mentor the small businesses on getting e-commerce set up, getting online, getting the socials, the things that are the native language of a Gen Z or millennial. And then on the other side, for the small business to mentor the youth on the boring logistics, the business, the stockkeeping, all the things that they know how to do, you know, managing their books and the tacit knowledge of handling a checkbook at the time, you know. So it actually was an amazing program and it's something that, you know, we've worked with, you know, grant partners to see if we can take that to other communities. But part of it is the knowledge piece and part of it is realizing technology is not an enemy. Technology is not the solution. It can go both ways and you can leverage it for, you know, you can leverage nuclear technology for power or for a bomb, right? And so this is similar with youth and what they can bring to their community, being paired with people who are digital immigrants, being not grown up with it as their, you know, base for an economy.

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So one of the major solutions that have connected us that makes perfect sense to me and has for years is, hey, why isn't there a localized currency that then can be used at these small businesses and has some advantages? And that way, if I'm a consumer, I know the value of staying close to home. If I'm a small business, you're going to buy there. There are all sorts of examples of this, and one I will use that I know of here in New York is that there are various Jewish communities where, um, they, uh, do conjoined fundraisers for the schools, where what happens is, um, I give the school— let's say I give the school $1,000, and then the school gives me $1,000 in currency that I can use at local businesses. And then the local businesses then functionally give a 20% discount on that stuff and then ended up paying it to the school. Now, the amount of money actually can be like very significant in this milieu because like instead of $1,000, it might be $10,000. And if I'm one of the families, I'm like, look, I'm gonna spend $10,000 at these local businesses anyway. So this really isn't that much skin off my back. And then for the business, it's like I'm guaranteed $10,000 worth of business. So I'm now going to send $2,000 to the school. And then for the school, it's like, I'm going to get like, you know, a lot of money from this effort and the value stays local. So I know that these things happen all the time in real life in communities that have them set up. One thing that makes me think that we're in for an uptick in localized currencies is they tend to pop up when things get really hairy or messed up in a particular way. Like in the Great Depression, there were all these examples of communities just being like, here, we're going to use this now. And there's a lot of value creation. We can talk a little bit about the velocity of money, but there are so many benefits. One benefit is that the value will stay local. So I mean, that's a win. You also can stimulate transactions where they wouldn't have happened otherwise. Uh, it's one reason why— you know what, what's funny is, um, in terms of advertisements for localized currencies, I feel like one of the strongest is a book by Edgar Kahn called No More Throwaway People. And, um, he was RFK Sr.'s, uh, speechwriter, uh, and they were concerned about ways to fight poverty. And what they put forward was time banking as an economic system where everyone's time has value, and then you could trade your time for these time dollars. And so, if I shoveled your driveway, I get a time dollar, I give it to you, you babysit my kid, person gives it to someone else, tutor or someone else to give them a ride. And then, we all kind of create this value of our time. Um, to me now, they didn't talk about localized currencies, but like, that strikes me as like adjacent to or touching the localized currency. Um, but it's even more stimulative because it's like, hey, um, if I do this for you, you can give me this, um, time dollar or, uh, the equivalent of the Berkshire— Berkshire's, um, saying that we're in this together. And like, you know, that— and then— And so it keeps the value close, but it also can stimulate different types of services and interactions in a way that right now would be hard. Because like, if you give me a ride to the airport right now, I guess I could pay you, but it's like seen as more of like a— I mean, I'll definitely pay you if you're like, you know, an Uber driver or something. But if like you're— if you're my friend and you do it, then it's a little weird to be like, here's, you know, here's $20. Whereas if you had like this exchange system, then it's more natural.

Yeah.

Well, you touched on a few things, and they are all related, but I want to break them down a little bit because part of that is the incentive. And, you know, you mentioned how the Jewish community in using an incentive that supports the community and then circles back to them, right? So, that touches on the local multiplier effect and, you know, some Some people might be familiar with that term, but it's some math that's getting lost. And so, the Institute for Local Self-Reliance had done a study about 15 years ago that dug into what kind of multiple do we actually see versus a major chain or something like that. And they found that roughly 13% or maybe 14% stays local when you are buying from a major chain. If you go to Amazon, it's closer to zero, you know, not even your tax base benefits much. And so—

And then what's the number if you give it to the local shop owner?

Yeah, so flipping that around, you get closer to 3 or 4 times more return. So putting it on the same scale, it's about 40, 55% that recirculates versus 13 or Or 14%. Dramatic. But that's the first tier of spending. Where we really see it is the other businesses and services that are also supported. You know, when the small business hires a web designer or hires a gardener or a sign maker, and the business-to-business is buoyed by that local multiplier effect. And you mentioned another important piece, which is the velocity of money, which is a metric that had been around for roughly 75 years. But in about 2023, 2024, the Federal Reserve Bank that was tracking that metric dropped it entirely. And I can tell you why, but essentially, we don't have that metric anymore. And so, it's math that myself and others in our space and institutions and foundations that see the value of this localism effect are actively building around it, even though the math has been dropped by the Fed.

Wow. Yeah, I miss the velocity of money. You know, I thought it was a very important statistic. And I'm glad that you guys are trying to substitute that. So if people don't know what it is, it's money getting spent and respent over and over again in a community, which can, as you say, drive a lot of additional value.

Yeah. And the, you know, from my standpoint, the main reason is, if you look at a macroeconomic standpoint, you're going to average all the data points, and you get to a mean that looks like nothing's happening. But the velocity of money really has spikes and valleys and very dynamic. And at a regional level, we see that there can be high velocity of money. And in other areas, it looks like all the money is being extracted from a community. And essentially, the Federal Reserve says, this looks like it's meaningless data. It's just too spiky, goes up and down, and you can't regionally compare it so well. It's too messy. And so that's essentially why it got dropped. But it is real. It's just important at a different scale, which is at the regional scale. Not at the macro scale.

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All right, so let's say someone's listening to this and saying DW and Yang are directionally correct that having money stay close to home. People instinctively know if I give it to a shop owner, that's better than if it. like, you know, shoots up to Amazon because the shop owner is going to hire the neighbor's kid at the shop. They're going to support the local restaurants and businesses. They're going to pay taxes locally. They're going to do like a million things that just, you know, you kind of instinctively sense it's going to be good. Plus maybe you just like the idea of there being an actual person or family behind that business you walk into. You know, they might have identity or values or, you know, like history or a story. And we can all instinctively sense that that stuff is good. So let's imagine that people are like, okay, I agree, locally owned small businesses are good. And then they also might agree that, well, if there was some way for me to be rewarded for shopping there, then like, I'm at least curious. I'm interested. I think that that Shop Small Saturday thing, Um, you know, like, it, it does happen. Uh, you know, people change behavior for one day or whatever. Um, not enough to, you know, make a difference.

Um, right.

Like, in terms of the big picture, in my opinion, um, better than nothing. Um, and so there are folks like you and me who have said, okay, like, the local currencies are the bomb. Um, I was with the founders of Bnotes, which is the Baltimore version. That was in effect for a number of years, and it's lovely. I wish I had a B-note that I could brandish right now. So it's been done in places beyond the Berkshires and Baltimore and Jewish communities. It does have a little bit of a hippie-dippy New England Vermont vibe. I guess the Berkshires resembles that. There are a lot of college towns that have had some version of this, like Ithaca, New York. Had a version, right?

Um, and so, and time banking there. Yep. Yeah.

And so my question for you, and I have my own answer, but, you know, you've been at this longer than me. Um, why don't we see more efforts in this space and what has kept them from being successful where everyone knows like, oh yeah, like, you know, we should just kick up a local currency here in, you know, like, uh, my city.

They've been largely nonprofit efforts and I actually started off in 2011 formalizing Localism as a nonprofit before realizing there's an important business side to this and tech and the tools of financialization that are currently pulling money out of communities can be flipped around. And so I see it a little bit more through the lens of You know, let's use the tools that are pulling money out of communities and use them for good. But on an organizational level, you know, why don't we see local currencies, you know, popping up everywhere? And they typically cap out at the scale of the brand. It's really simple. You know, I think dollars doesn't make sense in Austin, right? And so part of it is to recognize that if it's treated as a campaign, it's going to be a regional campaign. On my side, we built out a platform for circular currency that, you know, we can talk about as a solution that a community can just use.

Say more. So if someone wanted to do it, you have all these resources for them to— plug into?

Yeah, you know, like if you want to add payments and you're, you're doing online payments, you, you go to Stripe or Shopify, right? So, so it's LocalCash and localcash.org. And that's where, you know, there's an API and you can create your own brand. And yet it interfaces with others that are using the same platform. And we've done this in Long Beach and Southern Arizona, you know, as part of it is the incentive piece. And there's actually a business model for the organization that runs it so they can actually treat that as a way to self-finance it. But on a consumer level and as a small business level, it doesn't really work for them to be told, hey, you got to be part of this. And by the way, it costs money and you got to get this equipment and all that. They're already so busy. Trying to make sure that they're on, you know, up to date with tap to pay and they paying through the nose for payment processing. So it's built as a way that using ledger technology, not crypto, but using the ledger technology allows for there to be zero cost when it stays within network.

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That's why you're here, DW. LocalCash.org. If someone wants to kick up a local currency, you have tools and utilities for them. To me, it's always been a resource question. And you said that, look, some people who do this have done it as a nonprofit. It's like everything is going to have a certain level of resources. I am totally convinced of the benefits The benefit though is distributed among a group of people and small business owners in a community, and it's diffused, and it only kicks in if you actually do have a network effect and people using this consistently, or at least somewhat consistently.

Right.

And that network effect takes a lot of energy and/or resources to enable. And so people haven't had— like, if, you know, if like An average person was like, I'm going to create a local currency. How are they going to get everyone to use it? How are they going to get everyone to accept it? How are they going to advertise it? It's like there's a lot. And the people that have traditionally been most interested in this are either hippies or nonprofit types, both of which I love, by the way. I mean, not casting any aspersions.

Yeah.

But I'm totally with you that there is actually a very powerful business model embedded in this.

Yeah. And by the way, you know, the new yuppie term is solarpunks. And so, we definitely have a renegade contingent that's wanting to rethink our relationship to energy and all that. But on the incentive side, and, you know, how can I bring this to my own community? One is that you can't just start with, hey, we're going to print up a bunch of money and expect you to go back 15 years when that was normal. People like tap to pay. But if you think in terms of, you know, people wanting to use their phone because everybody has a phone, you also need to make it so it is going to work for somebody who has a fairly dumb phone, text messaging, right? And we've already seen this in Africa with M-Pesa and mobile money, Kenya. using it in a major way. Brazil, they've moved to open banking and you pay for things with QR codes on your phone instead of using credit cards and there's zero fee. You know, they skip the whole, you have to have a credit card to be an adult phase and you have to have a desktop computer. You know, it's straight to mobile, straight to embracing digital commerce. And what we're also seeing in Africa is complementary currencies where there's an informal trust economy that is debt-based, that is still viable when the sovereign currency takes a dip or Or worse, so there's you know coming back to brass tacks of you know how do I do this for my own community or as a small business? The unit of scale that I like to think about is one small business and their customers. That's just a membership program; it's a rewards program, and you know there's a number of off-the-shelf solutions for that. But if you have a a velocity of value. I'm using that instead of velocity of money. But if you're creating value that is tradable, like, for example, a spa or salon saying, you know, come 10 times or 5 times and you unlock a great spa experience, invite your friends and, you know, you both get a facial. This is velocity of value. And that's a rewards program. That's something that you're just being creative as a small business to do. Connecting the dots between businesses is the harder piece that requires coordination, requires an agreement on how, you know, we're going to have the same shared solution platform. But at the smallest level, it's a rewards program.

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I had an author on here, Brendan Greeley, who agreed that it has to be digital, it has to be on your phone, it has to be seamless, it can't create additional work. And I agree with you that it really is revved-up rewards programs in most of these cases. Have I bought 10 haircuts in a block in return for 2 free haircuts? Yes, I have. And it's a variant of that, but it plugs in more different businesses to create that network effect. So I'm with you, it needs to be digital on one's phone. I think that's one reason why Bnotes, which was paper currency, you know, was retired. Are there tools on the phone that you at localcash.org provide or otherwise? Because, you know, I'm with you that that is like the format it has to assume now.

Quick answer is yes. There is an education piece to it, which is how to, as maybe a nonprofit or a cooperative or even a company that wants to promote the community, to understand what's going on, how to use it. And so that's the first piece is, you know, understanding that there's some coordination between businesses that can be mutually beneficial. And it may look like 10 businesses or even 5 saying, hey, you know what, I want to offer this kind of value as an incentive for people to cross-promote each other. And what is the thing that you're going to offer? So a bookstore, hardware store, 3 restaurants, and now you have 5, right? And you got to have restaurants be, be part of any kind of program. So yes, the tools that we're offering include some education. We have a nonprofit education partner out of DC for community financial education, and they help with the curriculum side of it, Community Finance Academy. But with the practicality of Will people use it comes down to QR codes that can go on things. And what the trust needs to layer on is a shared ledger that keeps that visibility, the transparency between the participating businesses. And there's another piece to it, which would be a reserve we can get into.

But, uh, yeah, you had some compelling math on this, which is there's actually a dollar amount, um, based upon the size of the community. And the dollar amount, um, is a reserve so people know if they, you know, like want to cash out, um, that there, there's actual value there. Um, but the dollar amount wasn't that onerous or huge. Like, uh, what's the math? This is fun.

Yeah, I mean, if we go back 100 years, you know, what does it take people in a community to trust their own bank? And how much do they need to have on hand to be able to handle a bank run? And so, since 1933 until now, we've had a lot of push to centralize a lot of that control. The same math is between 10% to 15% needs to be ready on demand. But Why it's important to have a reserve is, and let's say, you know, $300,000 means that you can have a really strong robust support for $3 million in base that's recirculating. That $3 million cycle 10 times in a month, that's $30 million, right? So it has an outsized effect. That's essentially Not 10% of the volume of, or what we would call the velocity of money. That's 1% of the velocity of money in that same month. So a small amount can go really far because of the reuse of funds that come in, go out, come in and go out. And we're actually, by saying, hey, this money can't be spent outside of this network, We have a closed loop where instead of it being, you know, 45% to 55% multiplier effect, it's 100%, which is incredible. So, yeah, a little bit of money can go a long way. And it comes down to building the trust that's backed up. But also, there's— if you look at fintech, Venmo and Zelle, they're not really moving money instantly.

Right.

It seems like it to most people. You push a button, zero fee. Wow, that's great. What's happening though is there is a reserve pool that allows for a message to go instantly and the money actually doesn't move when that message happens.

It is good for people to understand that the message they're getting might be on a different schedule than the money. So to me, this is an instance where both businesses and nonprofits and entrepreneurs should be investing in various ways. It's going to be great for the community every time it happens. It is something where you need a certain level of resources, but there is a multiplier effect. And if done successfully, it's going to benefit the community many times over. the initial investment. So I'm advising our mutual friend Jenny Kassen on the Baltimore Community Commons, which is one place we're trying to make local currency plus time banking happen. But if people want to find out more from you about tools in the space, like, how can they best do so? Like, where, where would you recommend they go? Is it localcash.org?

Yeah, Local Fund on the funding side, localcash.org on the circular currency side. We have educational resources there. And the program that you're talking about, it's fantastic. You know, I would just say that starting small and tracking impact and then just sharing the results, that's all we can do, right? And really leveraging ways that that some sort of network effect can complement the community impact.

Well, congrats on the work you're doing, DW. LocalCash.org, LocalFund.org, one of the preeminent pioneers in this space. And I mean, to me, especially now that AI and mega tech are sucking more and more value up out of communities, like to me, this is one of the major answers. to what ails us. So congrats to you for helping both shine a light on what can be done and also helping communities make it possible.

Yeah, absolutely. And on the AI note and tech, yeah, I think there's an opportunity for something like a local AI, something similar to like a LimeWire way to network that could be coming up too. You know, I'm really a strong proponent of just how resources can be shared within a region. And, you know, it's becoming more and more viable for communities to take control even of the use of technology. Maybe we don't need data centers if we can have sharing of data resources.

Oh, well, you know, I like it. Locally owned AI. Maybe that can be something that DW Farrell, thank you so much for your time and your work.

Thank you so much.

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