I called a session at the Internet of Agreements Hackday to talk about using local currencies in local high street regeneration projects. The background to this idea is the project I did in Sittingbourne in 2014 called Workshop34.
Soon after I finished that project, I heard about Ethereum and grokked the idea of programmable organisations with their own currency. It seemed to me that it might be a useful way to help keep track of contributions to projects like this. One of the issues is that to do something like this, you need people, and people make decisions about their contribution in the context of their financial status - they might be able to do more if you were able to recompense them, but the project has no money and just giving people money can be problematic from a taxation point of view.
In the session I was pointed to Colony as a way of organising projects and rewarding people for defined tasks in cryptocurrencies.
We also discussed the desirability (or otherwise) of being able to exchange into fiat. Does it want to be insulated from Sterling? Or what? What are the legal and taxation implications? When does it cross into a highly-regulated space?
And we covered crowdfunding as an initial way to get things set up - not everything can be gained for free. Also the possibility of getting a crowdfund match-funded.
At least two people also talked to me about Colu - I saw that a while ago and mentally filed it under something else. So I shall look again.