Ep. 20 Community Currencies for Economic Regeneration with Scott Morris

06/10/24 • 50 min

In today’s episode we talk with Scott Morris, AKA the Token Jedi. Scott graduated from college with an interdisciplinary degree in political economics amidst the great financial crisis of 2008. What followed is a captivating story of Scott researching and implementing place-based initiatives, because as he puts it, “Place-based organizing in real communities, changing patterns, with real people, will create real outcomes and real value.

Scott is a seasoned veteran when it comes to community currency and I particularly loved this conversation because it is both philosophical and nuanced. We dig deep into what is actually within our means to protect the “main street economy.” To Scott, ReFi can steer us away from a shearing economy towards a sharing economy by making use of new capabilities that allow us to re-localize and re-circulatize our economies. These new capabilities allow for greater monetary pluralism and economic diversity, allowing for back-up systems and safety nets.

We discuss why Bitcoin is important to the world, but also how Scott sees the commodity aspect of Bitcoin being a tool of wealth preservation, whereas the folks who do not necessarily benefit from this are those people living on less than a dollar per day. Scott poses the question of what are certain instruments and strategies to bring people up from the bottom and helps us imagine what benefits a community could reap by using local currencies.

We get an update on what the ReFi DAO is up to, and discuss the ReFi DAO local node incubator: Alert! There is a local ReFi chapter coming your way! Go get involved locally!

Scott truly cares about making place-based systems for economic regeneration happen. I left this conversation inspired, I hope you enjoy it.
The Token Jedi's Twitter
ReFiDAO.com
ReFi DAO Local Communities

We get an update on what the ReFi DAO is up to, and discuss the ReFi DAO local node incubator: Alert! There is a local ReFi chapter coming your way! Go get involved locally!

Previous Episode

Ep. 19 Financing Impact with Maex Ament of WithEarth.xyz

In today’s episode we talk with Maex Ament of WithEarth.xyz & Centrifuge. Having vast experience leveraging technology to fundraise and create positive impact, Maex is a bridge between web3 and the climate space. Centrifuge tokenizes real world assets and puts them on the blockchain. Some examples are invoices, music royalties, mortgages, consumer debt, and all the way into carbon credits and carbon forwards. Maex gives a thorough and nuanced explanation of what tokenization of real world assets can allow for. One such example is democratizing the access to liquidity.

Maex shares his thoughts on how the immutability of smart contracts on the blockchain allows developers to build on a stack that is both philosophically and technologically “unstoppable.”

We discuss the real world asset summit in NYC this fall, as well as real world asset summits happening in Dubai and at ETH CC.

We finish the conversation with Maex giving some thoughtful feedback on how the ReFi space can evolve in order to “green pill” institutional players and governments. I thoroughly enjoyed this conversation with Maex, I hope you do too.
WithEarth.xyz
Maex's Twitter
Centrifuge.io
Centrifuge's Twitter

Next Episode

Ep. 21 Carbon Markets & Blockchain with Marcus Aurelius from Klima DAO

Welcome back from our summer break! Marcus Aurelius from Klima DAO joins us to discuss how blockchain technology can revolutionize the carbon offset market. Marcus has a background in data science and data engineering and is passionate about leveraging data to solve problems and make better decisions. Marcus sets the stage for us by sharing how nearly 2 trillion tons of CO2 have been emitted since the industrial revolution, yet the carbon markets to date have yielded only 2 billion CO2 credits, with only about half being retired. This is a huge mismatch, especially with an estimated 40 billions tons of CO2 being emitted yearly.

Klima is an exciting protocol for bridging carbon offsets onto the blockchain. You might ask why this is necessary? By bridging carbon offsets on-chain, Klima brings an unprecedented level of transparency and auditability to the carbon offset market. Klima is mostly focussed on the demand side of the carbon market, but we also learn about some of the carbon projects that Klima is supporting on the supply side who are using dMRV, digital measure report verification. This drastically reduces the cost of verifying ecological data claims, thus further democratizing the ability for smaller scale regenerative actors to enter the market.

Marcus is skeptical of the top-down approach, especially in the time frame needed to solve the environmental crisis. We discuss the key players in the carbon offset markets. From buyers to suppliers, Marcus shares nuanced insights on how this traditionally opaque carbon market is in dire need of improvement. In comes Regenerative Finance - bringing greater access to carbon markets with lower barriers to entry, allowing for greater liquidity, better on ramping rails for purchasing offsets, along with reducing green washing because the authenticity of impact claims can be verified and trusted.

We learn how AMM’s (Automated market makers) or decentralized exchanges, are the key innovation in decentralized finance because they allow for the creation of an asset with complex underlying behavior, unlocking the ability to create liquid assets out of previously illiquid assets.

Klima is looking to address the “Carbon tunnel vision problem” to move beyond just the carbon market and we learn of some of the exciting forward financing projects Klima is taking on. The beauty of ReFi is that some of these projects are cutting edge and would be traditionally hard to fund with the more conventional due diligence process of a philanthropy, but because KLIMA is a DAO, the public who holds the KLIMA token is able to vote and make decisions on where climate financing is invested.
Klima Twitter
Marcus' Twitter
Klima's Carbon Dashboard
Klima App
Offset your emissions with Carbonmark

ReFi Generation - Ep. 20 Community Currencies for Economic Regeneration with Scott Morris

Transcript

Speaker 100:00:02.547

The reality is right . We just live in an exceedingly extractive environment and the technologies that were sold to us as sharing economy tools and we're just going to be able to , you know , have a stranger come , stay in your room and earn a little extra money right Even that has become wildly extractive and has not at all lived up to . You know , the sharing economy promises