The Internet might be more than a new kind of marketplace and a new medium for exchanging money as we know it. If Bernard Lietaer and others are right, the Internet might lead to a radical change in the nature of money. Lietaer, fellow at the Center for Sustainable Resources at the University of California at Berkeley, was a central banker and currency manager in Belgium, with twenty-five years of working with governments and banks. He is one of a number of people around the world who have been working on the idea of 'alternative currencies' or 'local money' that keep resources recycling within communities, instead of draining money out of communities. These efforts predate the Internet, but Lietaer sees the Net as a vehicle for accelerating the changes that he and others have been foreseeing for years.
Money is an agreement within a community to use something as a medium of exchange.
The agreement can be conscious or unconscious, coerced or free. Most of us don't consciously choose our money. We have an opportunity to change that. The Internet is a space where that is possible to do. I expect a flourishing of money systems in the coming years.