SNOFCOIN: Creating Physical Tokens
Today we spent some time manufacturing our first physical “coins”. We’ve been thinking about how to do this for a while; it’s a little bit of a challenge. There are some basic principles we need to stick to for a start:
- the coins need to be made from recycled materials so that we’re not creating more rubbish or buying pre-existing tokens (such as poker chips).
- the coins need to be distinct and different from anything else we have lying around (and therefore also relatively difficult to counterfeit*).
- they need to be relatively easy to mint so that we can produce them in bulk.
The solution we’ve decided on for our initial prototype coins is to use Tetra Pak cartons as the material. They have relatively thick walls; are metallic on one side; and we have a lot of them.
In order to make coins from this material we need a consistent punching method; for this purpose we’ve found a decorative, hand-held punch that cuts a jagged-edged circle. This provides us with something fast, easily repeatable and low cost. At this point the total cost of minting is three Euros and unlikely to increase in the near future (although this is just a prototype).
The finished coins are shown in the header image in this post. They’re a bit too small at the moment and we anticipate changing the punch in the future; but we also need to remember that these are not to be used in the same way as normal currency—we won’t be using them to pay in shops, for example.
So, for the purpose of SNOFCOIN these tokens are perfectly adequate right now and they allow us to get started so that we can tackle some more difficult questions, such as:
- how do we set up the bank (and who controls it);
- what is our M0 and should there be a limit at all;
- how do we store these coins; and
- how much should be in physical circulation before converting to digital money?
The next post will tackle one or two of these. In the meantime we’re going to experiment with our prototype coins.
*we don’t expect to have to worry about counterfeiting in our family (although we’re always vigilant). However, imagining different future scenarios (such as what happens if more people use our currency) is a useful way of designing something more widely practical.
