Hi Dave, thank you, yes, I really welcome that. Please do bring in the money specialists.
AYU is a closed in-network system. Credits are not redeemable for national currency, not traded on an exchange, and not designed as speculative assets. They only work inside the network between members who agree to use them. We're thinking of denominating the unit against a basket of major national currencies, similar to how the IMF's SDR is defined against a basket. That's a unit-of-account convention, not a redemption promise: it gives members a stable way to price things inside the network, but it doesn't mean a Credit can be cashed out for that amount, or that it already commands that much in real goods outside the network. It only "floats" in the sense that the basket itself moves, but no one bids it up or down.
The purpose at this stage is not to pretend we already have a fully functioning alternative economy. We don’t. AYU is the proving ground. We’re testing and building the human and digital layers first: membership, identity, participation, contribution, governance, project formation, and early exchange.
Where AYU differs from mutual credit is in the issuance. Mutual credit begins from reciprocal obligation: one member’s positive balance corresponds to another member’s commitment to provide value back. AYU begins with distributed issuance: a very modest UBI baseline for members, plus additional credit for participation and contribution.
That is a real architectural difference, and it's where I want serious money people to weigh in. Positive issuance needs discipline. In full Creditism, part of that discipline comes through clearing/deletion mechanisms: primarily credits being deleted when spent in the marketplace. AYU is earlier than that. We are not claiming the full mechanism is proven yet.
The main reason members may value AYU Credits now is not that they can buy everything today. They can’t. It is because the credits represent participation in building a monetary system that could become far more useful if the network succeeds. The goal is not speculation or “number go up.” The goal is to build a stable coordination system where credit becomes a democratic unit of access and choice, not a tool for debt, extraction, or concentrated power.
So the practical question for AYU is: can we issue carefully, recognize real participation, grow real network utility, and model the system well enough to understand what stable allocation would actually require?
That is still open work. We need modeling, simulation, pilots, and critique from people who understand clearing systems, mutual credit, local currencies, and commons governance.
On collaboration, I’d much rather federate than compete. Mutual credit, clearing networks, Credit Commons, and use-credit obligations: all of these may have pieces we need to learn from or interoperate with. My hope is that AYU can become one compatible layer in a much wider commons economy, not another isolated island.
Am happy to do a call, or to write a short note for the specialists first, if that would be useful.
