Weaver et al. 2025, editorial to the special-purpose money special issue

Disposition: stated (single source). Read 2026-10-16 in the browser, sections read in full: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11625-025-01712-9

What: the editorial to a special issue coming out of the Swedish FORMAS project "Special-purpose money: Complementary digital currencies and the sustainable development goals". It argues that generalised commensurability (one money for everything, convertible, mobile) is an unexamined driver of unsustainability, and it surveys limited-purpose complementary currencies. Evidence that bends it: on Argentina's Moneda Par (Valdecantos et al.), blockchain can be designed to build trust, but "market development cannot be guaranteed simply by introducing a complementary currency". After 5 years, users can meet "only ... low levels of their overall needs" with it. Active stimulation of local supply is needed. On Brazil's e-Dinheiro platform and others (Sanches et al.), the paradoxes include "new dependence on external techno-elites and replacing trust in neighbours with trust in technology". Why it matters here: the currency precedent fails at the same point as convivial computing. Without a local supply of goods (or of local operators), the tool doesn't hold. The techno-elite paradox is the havana-snet chokepoint-broker finding in another form. Used on: philosophy-of-technology, trail-2026-10-16.