Bartering could, and should, be the primary way of exchanging the services you need in this setup. However, if you have something that other people want, but they have nothing you would want, that is where a digital currency could come into play.

Cut the middle man out and forget cash all together. Either way though I am not interested in some online currency. I like my cold hard cash.

No, I think you’re right on track. There are lots of How To’s and Where Do’s with this new concept (microtrend). That’s what makes it so appealing, yet such a pain in the a**. Haha!

It doesn’t have to be based on PayPal. In fact, I’m not a fan of the PayPal setup anyway considering how much PayPal charges (skims) per transaction. To me, this digital currency system would operate free of any transaction fees and that could be one of the main selling points. Of course, should you even try to monetize the site or go a Craigslist.com route?

If it were designing a digital currency, I would start by basing it on units on time, demand for those skills, and how highly the community ranks your skill set. Say 1 hour = 20 Ven at the very basic level and 1 hour = 100 at max.

Of course, education and experience would need to be evaluated and factored in based on community interaction and grading. For example, a 10 year SEO expert’s time should be worth more than a noob blogger’s writing skills.

I’m not sure I would give currency away like Monopoly Money for Passing Go, but I would have a system where people could buy the digital currency if they didn’t have enough to meet their needs so they wouldn’t have a huge barrier to entry. But in the beginning, instead of just creating money out of the cyberspace ether (like The Federal Reserve), users could earn it by working on whatever projects they wanted.

But you found the Achilles Heel with governing this imaginary currency. That part would be incredibly difficult, and you would probably need a multitude of regulations or a fairly obsessive community hellbent on self regulation.

Other tangents…

1) Could you earn interest on your Ven?
2) How does (how could) it transfer to real world money?
3) Should it be inflation proof or tied to a hard asset?

Lots of questions, and I’m probably not qualified to answer them all, but I do think it’s going to happen within our lifetime. Not sure if it permeate into the mainstream, though.

What is this currency WORTH in real money? How do I know that? How do you know that? Does this change? Based on what?

How do I convert my monies into this fictional currency? If it’s $1 = $1 in fake currency… is this fake currency not just pegged to the dollar then?

If you are suggesting that no real money is used to fund this fake money… then how does the fake money get started? Does PayPal essentially release 1,000,000 of them and say “go at it!” Once they run out of money and people aren’t using it, do they make more and further illegitimize the fake currency? The biggest issue here is no one would be governing the fake currency and it’s value. I still don’t understand why they would even issue 1,000,000 of them if they aren’t being compensated in real dollars, though.

How does PayPal make money off of it? So they take 2% of my PP bux, what can they use it for? They can’t put it in the bank.

It’s an interesting concept until you start asking all of the necessary questions around currencies.

Correct me if I went off base!

As it stands now, you can use US Dollars to fund a PayPal account to pay someone in British Pounds (or other currencies) but what if a system was devised where PayPal gave an alternate/digital/fictional currency?

As the HubCulture.com site has done, could the popularity of using a currency like “Ven” be used as a substitute to Dollars, Pesos, etc?

Could a U.S. based blogger write guest posts for a German blog, and have enough Ven for a free place to sleep? Most of us do something along these lines more than we think (I owe you, you owe me, etc) but what would it take to streamline the process and push it into the mainstream?