The Futurists

The Penny Farm


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As alternative local currencies become a popular hedge against global economic fragility, could a simple mobile app provide a common vehicle for income, savings, wealth aggregation, and investment based on generational farming techniques? If an app allowed anyone to purchase a virtual "seed" from a virtual seed bank, and the owner could elect to plant that seed virtually in an online farm for a penny - penny farm, if you will, and time provides predictable growth and propagation of new seeds which could then be stored (saved), sold at the marketplace (income), or replanted to create more seeds (invested), and seeds have a fixed unit value, such that the wealth-generating mechanism is time and multiplication of the seed rather than supply/demand market-driven value, and the app allows seed-holders to exchange seeds peer-to-peer locally or remotely for goods and services, and the seeds are exchangeable in local currency everywhere, could this be vehicle for a more fair, more inclusive, and more sustainable economic system? Could it theoretically include non-human participants - like A.I. bots and autonomous synthetic entities, or perhaps extraterrestrials? Could the "seed coin" become the Earth currency for intergalactic trade one day? What would be the challenges and risks associated with this innovation?

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The FuturistsBy The Foundry