Fifteen
Million
Credits

This weekend I was on a mission to
get my cupboard drawer unstuck.
I jiggled it a bit, and slid to the left
and to the right to no avail. In a fit
of desperation I yanked the whole
thing and out flew a little piece of
fabric and metal that jammed the
drawer

I recognised this little piece of fabric as a pouch that belonged to my grandmother, one she gave me when I was little. Opening the pouch revealed pieces of paper with a queen’s face on them. These little anachronisms were paper currency. It has been such a long while since I have seen any that I almost didn’t recognise them.

Paper money and standardised currency has been non-existent almost since I was a child. The depiction and perception of value has shifted significantly since then. Trying to not get distracted by my discovery, I quickly cleaned up the cupboard and shoved everything back in so that I could get started on my errands for the day.

Now as I walk to the neighbourhood grocery store with a large box of produce from my garden, my mind wanders back to the currency notes I found. I begin to think of how strange my life today might sound to someone from the time when paper currency was the only form of exchanging value (in my mind I refer to it as paper time).

As I entered the grocery store and placed my produce box at the drop off desk I realised that someone from paper time might think that I was a supplier to the store, and they would only be partially right. What I am doing is exchanging fresh produce from my personal garden for grocery credits which I can use in the grocery store to buy other supplies I may need from the store. I also drop off some of the seeds from my variety of plants for extra local credits which I can spend in other local stores and standalone businesses.

My favourite part about this exchange is that the seeds will be planted in the community garden – the produce from which goes mainly to the underprivileged families and to the local community shelters for food preparation at low or no cost.

A similar exchange system is available across the city through various stores, and while not all stores have adopted this mutually beneficial credits exchange system I prefer to patronise stores which do have it.

As I finish running my errands I end up with extra grocery & local credits which I am not certain I will end up using. On reaching home I open up my credit balance and troll the credit exchanges for the best exchange rates to purchase the video game credits I can use to buy the latest edition of my favourite games. I also realise that I will need health credits for my health check up next week. I quickly make the exchanges and also snap up some collector’s credits at low rates to save up for the vintage books I am looking to add to my collection.

My mind turns back to the paper currency I found and I think of the various forms of currency that have cropped up since large swathes of population around the world began losing faith in the poorly managed global financial systems. The increased fluctuations caused by climate change and associated disasters caused many to rethink how they assign value.

The new systems are not perfect by any stretch, and in fact we are still learning about the edges of these multiple avenues of value. Some of the darker edges are leading people to exchange genetic material with pharmaceutical companies so that they can develop the latest drug or therapy. People with specific genetic mutations are profiting off this practice greatly, almost reminiscent of the old Cryptokitties video game that took the world by storm in the mid-2010s.
This behaviour has spawned a rather strange
industry of genetically complementary dating
and mating.

Another more positive side of this shift in value has been the ability to control and monitor the money you spend. I remember my parents telling me to be careful of how I spent money growing up because in their younger years their spending habits became more wasteful as money changed from paper to digital, and the digital currency gamified purchase and hid the true value being spent. I however, grew up with digital currency and cards which allow me to control how many credits of each kind I spend. It keeps a check on my purchase habits as well as giving me a moment to reflect on
the purchases that I do make.

I recognise that we are in the midst of significant change, and I have heard about the extreme new credit systems the rise:

Feelers – Digital purchase mediums in the form of cards, apps or embedded chips which gauge your current mood to indicate purchases you should make.

Lucky Cats – Digital currencies which act like the luck of the draw. Rapidly changing value as the credits are bought and sold, every time you make a purchase the value available is equivalent to the luck of the draw.

Chances – A new credit system for those who crave a little bit of a gamble. Every time you make a purchase you cast a die which will decide whether or not you are able to make the purchase at that moment.

Finding these old currency notes has me thinking about where we put value and how we calculate it. While traditional monetary systems are approaching zero value, it does make me think about whether at its heart our current parallel “credits” economy is actually any different from the way previous generations placed value in paper money? Which side of the thin line between creation & destruction of value are we? And most importantly what am I going to do with those notes? I guess I can always hang on to them for the memories or trade them away for some more valuable specialised credits. We’ll see…