If you're talking about Intercoin, then no, it's extremely far from hopeless. (Plus, even "hopeless" projects have been heavily funded in the last 2 years to solve e.g. stablecoins.)

Complementary Currencies aren't new, in fact many of them have been around for a while. Bristol Pounds [1] and Berkshares [2] are just two examples of many. And yes you can pay local taxes with them.

In fact, before the Greenback (the paper dollar) was fiat currency, there was the Free Banking Era [3]. Money was actually federated: banks would keep gold reserves, and issue banknotes. That's what circulated, not the gold. The gold and silver coins were fiat currency, and only Congress could mint them. However, people traded in local community currencies. The Greenback started as a way to finance the Civil War, and was good for paying tarriffs land taxes of the Federal government (the only kind of taxes they had). It became so popular that Congress made it legal tender after the war. That's what you have come to take for granted and think it's the majority of the money. But it's not.

Today, community currencies exist, but it's not as visible. They are federated with "landlords" who can confiscate your money, but no longer location-based. A casino or Disneyland bucks are probably the most visible examples. But actually, Facebook/GMail/iMessage Payments, PayPal, WeChat, and your local bank, are all examples of internal currencies. And you can't pay taxes with them either. Yet we all use them.

The problem is, until now, they've been pretty "dumb" money. Paper currency, or a centralized bank. Not an open platform. For payments, currently, centralized wins. WeChat, PayPal, Facebook, Venmo, as well as all the banks. They know how the money is being spent, you don't. Mint.com was a play for just the data, that's how valuable it is. What if there was a free and open source network for communities to have their own currencies? That would lower the barrier to having your own currency, run your own monetary policy and generally do all the cool things you can do when you are in control.

You know, it's less than 100 years that anyone can print anything without a gatekeeper. In most countries, even in the 80s, you could only typewrite some document on 4 carbon papers, and if you wanted a 5th paper you needed to type it all again. Then XEROX invented the copier and it spread to other countries. Then Steve Jobs and Apple led the way in desktop publishing. Then we got the Internet, and blogs. And then we got cellphones. Now we take it all for granted.

So in the same way, new technologies allow people who previously needed gatekeepers (the post office, print shops, etc.) to do it all themselves (email, blogs). Dangerous stuff for entrenched institutions? Perhaps! Or perhaps they can adapt with the times.

It's just the opposite: currencies absolutely require a single coordinator with currency power.

I think this is the source of most of your confusion. No, you just think they require it because you haven't seen an alternative. At the very least, there is no reason why two people buying coffee in NYC and in Paris should be on the same ledger. But even more to the point, look at what SAFE Network is doing, read the primer I linked to above. It is massively parallel, and it's secure!

I would respond to the rest, but this message is getting pretty long already.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QtGEby4ORGM

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bzzkDRIjW30

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_central_banking_in_...