It’s no secret that the global economy is in trouble. But in every crisis there is an opportunity. Here is ours.

The problems that first came to light in the Global Financial Crisis of 2008–2009 continue to rumble on, looming over the world’s major economies. Having started as a credit crunch and mutated into a sovereign debt crisis, we are now faced with stagnation or persistent low growth, whilst interest rates bump along the bottom (or below) and debt continues to mount.

There are no easy answers to these problems. Monetary policy is now at the absolute limit of what it can achieve. We have moved from low interest rates to zero interest rates to, in some countries, negative interest rates. Quantitative Easing, once hardly more than a bizarre experiment, has become routine and now brings rapidly diminishing returns in the real economy whilst artificially inflating asset prices. Helicopter money is openly talked about, even if no economy has — yet — taken the unprecedented step of implementing it.

Where this will all end is unclear. Every week there are indications that a reckoning is due, like ripples on the surface suggesting far more is going on below the surface. Violent swings in value for different currencies; Deutsche Bank’s capitalisation problem and the lack of a clear solution; the fact that stock markets are trading at all-time highs, over-inflated because there are no returns elsewhere — least of all in cash or the bonds markets, which are yielding negative returns.

This is the context into which bitcoin emerged. Satoshi directly referenced the crisis by encoding a headline from The Times into the Genesis block: ‘The Times 03/Jan/2009 Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks’. Now, nearly eight years later, the crisis persists — but our opportunities have grown.

Blockchain’s opportunity

Blockchain technology has matured in the intervening time and is now ready to provide the infrastructure for a new kind of economy. Time-based currencies and the ChronoBank ecosystem will provide a parallel or alternative to the existing monetary system and the economy built on it. ChronoBank offers not only a new way for people to find employment — decentralising recruitment for the professions in the same way that Uber decentralised the taxi business — but attractive new asset classes for investors looking for a safe haven that is protected from inflation and volatility. Labour Hour (LH) tokens will be linked to average wages or labour costs in their countries, something that tends to increase with or above inflation. This makes them an excellent store of value and an investment that rises in value in a stable and sustainable way.

We know that our investors will mostly be younger people who were not responsible for the choices that led to the financial crisis and our ongoing economic realities. We recognise the injustices of a generation saddled with unpayable debts and the lack of employment that have resulted from the errors of judgment of the past. That’s why we’re excited that we can offer something meaningful that represents genuine change, and a fantastic opportunity for investors and users alike.