ChronoBank is pioneering a whole different form of money, and it carries a very different set of values and implications than regular fiat money.

Philosopher Marshall McLuhan is famous for coining the term, ‘The medium is the message.’ His point was that the way that content is presented fundamentally impacts the way it is interpreted by its audience. ‘Our conventional response to all media, namely that it is how they are used that counts, is the numb stance of the technological idiot. For the “content” of a medium is like the juicy piece of meat carried by the burglar to distract the watchdog of the mind… The effects of technology do not occur at the level of opinions or concepts, but alter sense ratios or patterns of perception steadily and without any resistance.’

If that sounds extreme, consider how different forms of social media shape debate and engagement. Twitter forces discussion into 140-character chunks; Facebook strongly favours images and responses to them; Snapchat is famous for the impermanence of its images; Vine requires a six-second format.

The money is the message

What is true of media is also true of money. There has been much discussion of the nature of our economic system and the shortcomings of capitalism since the global financial crisis — of irresponsible borrowing and lending, of unsustainable debt and moral hazard. There has been relatively little about the monetary system that underpins our economy, repeated rounds of QE notwithstanding. Prior to the crisis, almost no one questioned our monetary system at all. We just took it for granted.

The reality is that, like McLuhan’s assessment of media, fiat money imports its message under the radar. The devil’s bargain we make is that the ability to manage a national economy requires permission to create money at will. That money is not only created by central banks, but by commercial ones, under government guidelines and targets. The vast majority of money is not central bank money — it is debt-based commercial bank money, lent into existence in the form of mortgages, business loans and other instruments.

It’s a truism that the rich get richer. Having money gives you opportunities to make money. But when the monetary system itself reinforces that idea, the odds are stacked against the majority of the population. Debt-based fiat money requires interest payments by its very nature, and therefore the redistribution of wealth from the poor to the already wealthy. Inflation erodes the value of savings, disproportionately impacting poorer people and acting as a de facto transfer of wealth from poorer citizens to the wealthier (who can access better stores of value) and to the state. All of this is implicit in our current monetary system, but it is rarely questioned.

ChronoBank is pioneering a completely new form of money: blockchain-based Labour Hours. Because labour-hire costs have historically risen sustainably and ahead of inflation, LH will serve as an inflation-proof store of value accessible by anyone. And so the message in the medium of money is this:

Fiat money implicitly conveys the principle that your money is not truly yours. That it can be confiscated, devalued, charged for by a variety of means. That, one way or another, you have to pay to own it.

Time-based cryptocurrencies implicitly convey the principle that your money is yours, and that it should at the very least hold its value over time, if not appreciate in value. You worked for it already, and you should not have to work further to keep it.

We think that’s a message — and a medium — worth spreading. To find out more, visit www.ChronoBank.io.