Knok, the fastest growing home exchange community, shows that house swapping is the perfect example of collaborative consumption.
(PRWEB) May 08, 2013
This year has seen the consolidation of the sharing economy and several conferences around this theme confirm it. In April, 150 sharing economy leaders joined author and organizer Lisa Gansky in San Francisco for Let's Mesh. In May, the OuiShareFest in Paris brought together over 500 people from all over Europe, and in June, the sharing economy is Le Web’s theme for its London event.
After the output of these events and the discussions on the future of the sharing economy with practitioners around the world, Knok has created a list of the 7 most relevant reasons why home exchange is a great example of a collaborative consumption business:
Bitcoin is an open source software system. That means nobody owns it.
Up until now, it's been used as a decentralized currency system.
Bitcoin makes it possible to make non-reversible decentralized transactions on a global scale.
It's visibility as a currency has been good for bitcoin. Speculation has driven up the price of bitcoin to a market cap over $1 billion.
That's attracted lots of use and investment activity (mostly in mining), which has grown bitcoin much faster than it would have grown otherwise.
However, one thing that most people don't understand: bitcoin is more than just a currency.
NOTE: Actually, it's more of a fungible share of ownership in the system than a pure currency, as you will see.
Firstly, it's the first system to deploy that solves the distributed consensus problem in computing (a hard problem). That means a clone of the system has many potential uses. For example, it could be used a global reputation system (as in, everyone on the system says this person has the good reputation they claim).
It also some uses in its current form that most people don't know. For example, it has a limited capability to publish information. It was built into the system by the original designer, who left some notes on what the system was originally designed to do.
That publishing capability was put into use a couple of days ago when someone publish 2.5 MB of Wikileaks cables in the bitcoin blockchain. It cost a bit of money (about $500) to accomplish that, but the information that was published is now going to be public forever.
Of course, it didn't take long for someone to up the ante. Someone decided to publish links to pedophile links in the blockchain.
It's going to be interesting to see how Bitcoin responds to this.
One of the oddest bits of news to emerge from the economic collapse of Cyprus is a corresponding rise in the value of Bitcoin, the Internet’s favorite, media-friendly, anarchist crypto-currency. In Spain, Google (GOOG) searches for “Bitcoin” and downloads of Bitcoin apps soared. The value of a Bitcoin went up to $78. Someone put out a press release promising a Bitcoin ATM in Cyprus. Far away, in Canada, a man said he’d sell his house for BTC5,362.
Bitcoin was created in 2009 by a pseudonymous hacker who calls him or herself Satoshi Nakamoto (and who might be several people). It’s a form of virtual cash used to buy goods and services online. Even by Web standards, it’s a strange and supergeeky phenomenon. This is what happens when software and networks meet the concept of currency, when you take peer-to-peer networks and advanced cryptography and ask, “How can I make a new economy?”
Swarm Economy: There is a bitcoin craze at the moment, with prices of bitcoin skyrocketing. Bitcoin is still far from ready for prime time, but as it matures, it will change society’s fundamental operations much more than the Internet did. The net, after all, only allowed people to talk and shop more efficiently. By comparison, bitcoin eradicates the government’s ability to operate.
Let’s begin by looking at what a bitcoin is. It is money. It is a new form of money that isn’t issued by a government. Governments don’t have a monopoly on coming up with things you can trade and barter with, and bitcoin is one such non-governmental barter instrument. The difference between bitcoin and all other such tokens of value that have been invented over the years is that nobody is in control of the money supply, and nobody is in control of the money flow. This means that nobody can start the printing presses to eradicate your savings, and nobody can seize or see your wealth or income. You can think of it as an open-source currency compared to proprietary, state-issued currencies.
There is no central bank. This is a revolutionary concept. People can trade cash at a distance without going through an intermediary. The first time you send the value of a cup of coffee to a friend in India on a Sunday, without any transaction fees, and they have the money instantly, without anybody but you knowing of the transaction, your jaw drops.
Monetary reform activist Wayne Walton of MtnHours.com joins us to talk about the hour money system and how it can be used as a dollar/yen/Euro/peso alternative to foster local business and rid the economy of usury and manipulation. We discuss the ideas presented in his Kindle book (2.99), Hour Money Jubilee: How to create immediate abundance for humanity, and how people can apply this in their own community for a positive, solutions-based approach to getting at the root of the money problem.
Ancient wisdom reveals solutions for immediate abundance for humanity. This book uses sacred economics to create a victory plan not phony austerity measures and fear mongering. History repeats and we face the same debt problems which existed throughout ancient history. Powerful, actionable solutions are available without displacement, despair and hardship. We just need to ignore loyal opposition gate keepers who are hired to protect the status quo.
Real revolution requires usury-free money creation and lending. Interest based economics creates an un-payable debt Ponzi. Jews, Christians and Muslims all forbid usury before being corrupted by the “money power”. We will actually have far more money, lending and banking without interest.
Discover how interest is a mathematic fraud like a Ponzi. Discover how usury-free societies offer a 15-25 week work year. Learn this information yourself so that you are no longer deceived by the “money power”. Bring this message of hope and abundance to your family, neighbors, friends and countrymen. Become the leader that you were meant to be.
Swarm Economy: Yesterday, news broke that the Expensify service has enabled bitcoin payments. With the rapidly expanding number of businesses accepting bitcoin as payment method, one could think that this was merely another player in the pool of bitcoin’s expanding economy (which just broke the one-billion-USD barrier, by the way). But Expensify is something much more than that.
Let’s first discuss the concept of expense reports to understand Expensify’s important role in the subsurface payments ecosystem. On all companies I’ve worked for lately, you don’t ask the company to buy something you need for your work – it’s just too much paperwork, too much red tape to make it happen. Instead, you get a small budget for discretionary stuff you need to do your job, and you just buy stuff as you need it with your private credit card, send in the receipts to your employer, and get reimbursed on the next paycheck, which arrives before the credit card bill is due.
This system is pervasive and ubiquitous. Sending in receipts for payment like this is known as submitting an expense report. It’s still bureaucracy and red tape and it still sucks, but it sucks considerably less than asking for approval in advance.
Enter Expensify, a service that markets itself straightforwardly as “Expense reports that don’t suck”. I’ve been using Expensify through its development for the past couple of years and have also contributed my use case (frequent travel outside of internet coverage), which led them to implement important new features – meaning, they’re a responsive bunch, too.
Monetary reform activist 
