There’s a simple solution to many of the world’s biggest problems in a place you never thought to look
Human psychology and behavior are affected by the very type of money we use. All nations currently use a type of money severely unbalanced toward the male, or Yang, side. History shows that by modifying the type of money system we use, we can shift from a paradigm of scarcity and control to one of freedom and prosperity.
Help us implement it.
Not just a new currency — a whole new system
Money is an agreement to use something as a medium of exchange. Based on how money systems affect the human psyche, they can be divided into Yang money types and Yin money types. All current national money is fiat currency, a Yang type, which tends to activate protection, hoarding, competition, scarcity, and control. Complementary currencies are usually Yin types, which activate cooperation, community, and abundance.
GGTrust proposes a system of Yin-type local currencies to increase local prosperity and community, alongside an international Yin-type currency that complements the current Yang fiat money system. We believe GEO can increase prosperity for those who use it, preserve freedom and privacy, encourage long-term thinking, and balance the cycles of global economics — while including the positive characteristics of Yang money, most characteristics of Yin money, and selected new opportunities from cryptocurrencies.
“GEO isn’t just a new currency. It is a whole new currency system. Let’s look at why we’d want a new system at all — instead of just the plain old pocket money we use today.”
Dr. Bernard Lietaer — MIT-trained computer scientist, PhD economist, former central banker, architect of the Euro, successful currency trader, and past professor of International Finance at Louvain University and of Economics at the Sorbonne. His research into complementary currencies and archetypal psychology underlies much of this project’s thinking.
Our money system is broken
It is skewed and dysfunctional. There is plenty of money in the world, but most of it sits still and never circulates.
The giant sucking sound
Our whole economy is set up to pull wealth out of local places and send it to the pockets and banks of the wealthy. Money spent on groceries flows to distant corporate headquarters, not the farm down the road. Colonial-era extraction never really stopped — it just changed uniforms.
One question worth sitting with: if our monetary system were so good, why would people have spontaneously developed some 4,000+ local currency systems to complement it? If there were no persistent deficiencies in the current system, why would so many intended solutions emerge?
What if just one thing changed?
- Wealth stays in local communities, rather than being sucked up by cities and governments
- An increased sense of community and cooperation
- Privacy in money transactions, without banks as a required intermediary
- Removal of governmental restrictions and interference in transactions
- Long-term thinking in economic decision-making, backed by real assets
- Increased balance in the male-female dynamic in our societies
- Many of the benefits of cryptocurrencies, like Bitcoin, without the speculation
Money has taken many forms — currency is just the one that circulates
An agreement to use something as a medium of exchange, a measure of value, and a store of value. US Dollars have lost 96% of their value in the last 100 years — not much of a store of value.
Cows, cowries, cigarettes
The earliest pattern: start with a commodity everyone already values, and use it to exchange for anything else.
Gold & silver coinage
Retained value for millennia — but precious metals have a strong tendency to migrate toward existing wealth.
Ostraca, warehouse receipts, silver certificates
A token that represents a commodity held elsewhere — potshards for stored wheat in Dynastic Egypt, or a US Silver Certificate redeemable for real silver.
Every national currency today
Backed by nothing but government decree. Every fiat currency in history has eventually failed, typically within about 40 years.
Bracteaten, ostraca, scrip
Thin silver wafers used in the High Middle Ages, and grain receipts in Dynastic Egypt — both periods of unusual prosperity, health, and women’s rights.
Bank ledgers, Bitcoin
Most money today exists only as electronic entries. Cryptocurrency adds cryptographic security and a public ledger, but early versions favor speculation over stability.
Over 4,000 in active use today
Mutual credit systems, time/dollar systems, scrip, and loyalty currencies (air miles, elder-care currencies in Japan) all coexist with national money to fill gaps it leaves behind.
How a money system shapes human behavior
Bernard Lietaer uses the Jungian concept of archetypes — recurring patterns of emotion and behavior observed across time and cultures — to explain how the type of money we use shapes the society around it.
Sovereign
Integrates all the other archetypes into a whole self; the power to choose and rule over one’s own life.
Shadow: Tyrant / WeaklingWarrior
Discipline and protection — defends what needs defending, Yang energy activated to protect scarce currency.
Shadow: Sadist / MasochistMagician
Knowledge and technology — the complex machinery of central banking and anti-counterfeiting.
Shadow: Apollonian / DionysianLover
Beauty, empathy, and connectedness — the archetype current money leaves almost entirely inactive.
Shadow: Addict / ImpotentGreat Mother
Abundance and provision — deeply repressed by scarce currency, its repression is a root of scarcity thinking.
Shadow: Greed / Fear of ScarcityFear splits each archetype into two shadow polarities
When an archetype is repressed rather than balanced, it expresses itself unconsciously through predictable behavior.
| Archetype | Yang Excess | Yin Deficit |
|---|---|---|
| Sovereign | Tyrant | Weakling |
| Warrior | Sadist | Masochist |
| Lover | Addict | Impotent |
| Magician | Apollo (hyper-rational) | Dionysus (indiscriminate) |
| Great Mother | Greed | Fear of scarcity |
All national money today activates the Sovereign, Warrior, and Magician — and leaves the Lover and Great Mother almost entirely dormant. Activating those two through a complementary Yin-type currency is the psychological mechanism behind everything GEO proposes.
Two very different types of money
Every currency carries a character. Here’s how the money in your pocket today compares to a Yin-type currency like GEO.
| Characteristic | Yang Money (Today) | Yin Money (GEO) |
|---|---|---|
| Scarcity | Precious and scarce | Abundant |
| Materials | Scarce metals | More ordinary materials |
| Status | Monopoly of currency — only one allowed | Complementary currency, usually coexisting with hard money |
| Interest | Earns interest | Negative interest (demurrage) |
| Ownership | Concentrates wealth in the hands of the elite | Circulates among all of society |
| Migration | Tends to leave the community, extracting wealth | Stays in the community and recirculates |
| Use in Trade | Long-distance trade, outside the local community | Community trade — benefits relationships |
| Type of Capital | Financial capital | Social capital |
| Store of Value | Store of value | Tends to lose value over time |
| Means of Exchange | Yes | Yes |
| Durability | High | Low — frequently recollected and reissued |
| Thinking Stimulated | Short term | Long term |
| Archetypes Activated | Sovereign, Warrior, Magician | Lover, Great Mother |
Efficiency vs. resilience
A currency by itself is like a single tree on a plain — the first thing struck by lightning. Our current money system is like a plantation of pine trees: all the same type, all subject to the same strengths and weaknesses. A natural, healthy forest doesn’t develop only oak trees, or only orchids — each species has its niche, and diversity is what gives the whole system resilience. Bernard Lietaer’s research shows that the present money system is inherently structurally unstable: no matter how carefully regulators steer it, a monoculture currency system will eventually crash, just as a car with worn steering will eventually go off the road.
A sustainable economy contains several different types of money at once — Yin and Yang, crypto and physical, national and complementary and local. The GGCurrency system is designed to be exactly that kind of ecosystem, restoring the diversity that gives an economy the same resilience a rainforest has over a monoculture plantation.
Switzerland actually runs two currencies at once: the famously stable Swiss Franc, and a complementary currency called the WIR that has quietly provided counter-cyclical stability for 80 years. Bernard Lietaer used this same principle to design the Terra Trade Reference Currency, an international currency backed by a basket of assets including oil, gold, and wheat, intended to do at the global level what the WIR does for Switzerland.
Two ways money can treat time
Interest concentrates wealth upward
Interest is a fee charged by the owner for the use of money. But when a bank creates a loan, it creates the principal — never the interest owed on top of it. To pay that interest, borrowers must extract it from the wider economy. The bottom 80% of households always pay net interest to the top 10%. It is one of the most consistent upward wealth transfers in any economy that uses it, which is part of why interest is prohibited outright in Jewish, Christian, and Islamic religious law.
Demurrage is reverse interest
Demurrage — from the French word for “rust” — is a small usage fee charged to the holder of money, the way ancient Egyptian grain receipts lost a little value to spoilage and storage fees over time. It works like the childhood game of Hot Potato: nobody wants to be holding the currency when the fee comes due, so it keeps moving. A demurrage-based currency in 1930s Austria circulated up to 130 times in 13 months — compared to roughly 8–10 times a year for ordinary national currency.
Because that currency circulated roughly 13× as fast, it functioned as roughly 13× as much money moving through the community — by the use of demurrage, it may be possible to increase the effective wealth of a community by more than ten times the original amount, just from this one small usage fee.
Demurrage also changes what people invest in. In an interest economy, a 5% annual rate erodes almost all of a long-term investment’s value over 100 years — so people rationally chase short-term returns. In a demurrage economy, the incentive flips: people invest in durable goods and long-lasting infrastructure instead of hoarding currency. Historians note that Dynastic Egypt and the High Middle Ages — both periods that used Yin-type demurrage currencies — were also periods of unusual prosperity, nutrition, and freedom for women. The wealth spent building Chartres Cathedral, for instance, is still the primary source of income sustaining that town today, nearly 1,000 years later.
Assembling the pieces into a functioning system
Nine design principles guide how GGCurrency is built.
A. Balance Yin & Yang
Create a system incorporating both Yang (financial capital) and Yin (social capital) currencies together.
B. Back It With Assets
Back the currency with a basket of currencies, precious metals, and commodities — not debt.
C. Assets, Not Debt
New currency is created by increasing real assets or crediting labor performed — never by issuing more debt.
D. Interchangeable Forms
Digital, paper notes, share certificates, and local currencies — all convertible into one another.
E. Crypto Attributes
Cheap, fast, and secure electronic transmission, built on Ethereum for conditional transfers and escrow.
F. A Trade Reference Currency
A Terra-like international counter-cyclical currency to balance business cycles the way the Swiss WIR does.
G. Apply Demurrage
At least on the Yin portion of the currency, to keep it circulating rather than being hoarded.
H. Smart Exit Fees
Small discounts to enter local currency, and a modest fee to convert back out, keeping value local.
A ninth principle balances the system: even though GEO is not a national currency, it is protected by a strong legal and cryptologic framework — activating the Warrior archetype so the beautiful, abundant Yin side of the system is matched by real security.
Many currency forms, one coherent system
Just as the US Dollar has operated as more than 20 different currency forms at once (Federal Reserve Notes, Treasury Notes, silver dollars, gold certificates, and more), GGCurrency is designed with several interchangeable forms for different purposes.
Cryptocurrency creation
Shares are produced through cryptologic “mining,” which validates each transaction and builds a protected blockchain ledger — the same basic model used by Bitcoin. Other shares form an initial digital block representing GGT ownership. Ongoing mining is taxed to generate a pool of shares for those performing labor for the system. The system is intended to be built using Ethereum, which allows escrow functions, conditional transfers, and property transfers beyond what Bitcoin alone can do.
Paper, gold, and digital shares
Paper share notes, gold-backed Aurum notes (thin gold layers sandwiched in polyester, in 1/10th and 1/20th gram denominations), and purely digital shares are all designed to be fungible and interchangeable, authenticated with anti-counterfeiting holograms and QR codes.
Local currencies & artisanal coins
Local communities can issue their own scrip, printed with local imagery, or authorize artisanal coins minted by local craftspeople — deliberately activating the Lover archetype through beauty as well as function. All are designed to be exchangeable back into the broader GGCurrency system.
Labor shares
A tax on newly mined shares (and on the fee for converting local currency to national currency) funds a pool of shares that can be allocated directly for community labor — work validated and credited without needing to be denominated in national currency first.
Asset backing
GGCurrency shares are intended to be backed by a diversified basket of real assets: major commodities (oil, copper, wheat, rice, corn), real property, intellectual property, energy production, forest land held for carbon credits, precious metals, and international currencies — deliberately spread across asset classes rather than concentrated in any single one, so that no single market swing can destabilize the currency’s value.
Trade Reference Currency & countercyclical balance
A Terra-style Trade Reference Currency, similar in function to the Swiss WIR, provides countercyclical balance at the international trade level — expanding when the broader economy contracts, and contracting again as it recovers.
Proven, documented, and already working elsewhere
Complementary currencies aren’t a hypothetical — they have real, documented track records.
Wörgl
Facing bankruptcy in the Great Depression, the mayor issued a local “stamp scrip” currency backed by the town’s tiny remaining fund. Because it lost a small percentage of value if not stamped monthly, no one wanted to hold it — so it moved.
Wörgl repaved streets, rebuilt its water system, and built houses, a bridge, and a ski jump — before the Austrian central bank shut it down, precisely because it worked too well. Economist Irving Fisher concluded that “the correct application of stamp scrip would solve the depression crisis in the US in three weeks.”
Read the full story →Swiss WIR
An independent currency used alongside the Swiss Franc by businesses in construction, retail, hospitality, and manufacturing — created and “discreated” through loans, existing only in electronic trade accounts.
When business is slow and Swiss Francs are scarce, vendors accept WIR instead of discounting their goods — keeping businesses running through the low part of the cycle. When the economy strengthens, debts are paid off in WIR and the currency is “discreated.” Most economists have never even heard of it.
Read the full story →Bus Tokens & Garbage
Facing unmanageable favela garbage with no city budget to fix it, Mayor Jaime Lerner offered bus tokens for sorted garbage, and food parcels for recyclables — turning an abundant local resource (labor and produce) into working currency.
In one three-year span, over 100 schools traded 200 tons of garbage for 1.9 million notebooks, saving 1,200 trees a day in paper alone. Curitiba won the United Nations’ highest environmental award in 1990.
Read the full story →A balanced, self-regulating system of prosperity
- We see the international monetary system evolving into a balanced, stable system of prosperity.
- We see local and international Yin-type currencies increasing prosperity, community, cooperation, gender balance, and freedom for those who choose to use them.
- We see our money as autonomous of government control, and impossible to inflate away.
- We see a self-regulating system — a Disseminated Autonomous Organization — requiring little or no human manipulation.
- We see support organizations, educational tool kits, and local clubs helping communities implement their own local currencies.
What the GGCurrency System is designed to be
- Autonomous — free from central bank or government manipulation
- Self-regulating, expanding and contracting with demand automatically
- Private — transactions free from external observation
- A credit-based system, not a debt-based one like every national currency today
- Asset-backed, unlike fiat currencies or Bitcoin
- Secure from theft or counterfeiting, and inexpensive to transfer internationally
- Structured to keep wealth local rather than exporting it to distant cities
- Historically grounded — built on documented periods where similar systems benefited entire societies
“You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.” — Buckminster Fuller. Rather than trying to reform the existing financial system, the Trustees of Global Genius Trust are building a better one, and letting the marketplace decide.
What changes when the money changes
Keeps Local Wealth Local
Circulates within the community instead of extracting wealth to distant markets.
Long-Term Thinking
Promotes long-term investment and health over short-term extraction.
Relationships & Community
Rewards cooperation and connection between neighbors, not just transactions.
Gender Balance
Inherently benefits women and helps rebalance a system tilted toward Yang values.
Cooperation, Not Competition
Structured to reward collaboration over zero-sum competition.
Liberty
Free from governmental manipulation and control — not issued or revoked by decree.
Asset-Based, Not Debt-Based
Using it creates real wealth, unlike debt-based national currencies.
Benefits of Cryptocurrency
Cheap and easy to transmit internationally, like Bitcoin — and much more.
Straight answers to the questions we hear most
What is the GEO?
GEO is an alternative currency designed to complement national fiat or gold-backed currencies such as the US dollar or Euro. It exists in several interchangeable forms — cryptocurrency, paper notes, gold-backed notes, and corporate shares — all part of one monetary ecosystem designed to bring more stability, prosperity, and sustainability to the communities that use it.
What is the difference between Bitcoin and GEO?
Bitcoin’s value is produced purely by computational “mining” and has swung from under a penny to well over $1,000 — great for speculators, less great for economic stability. GEO shares some cryptocurrency characteristics, but is also available as a gold note, in digital form, and in paper form, and is designed to hold a stable value against a basket of assets rather than swing wildly.
Can GEO replace a whole country’s currency?
GEO is designed to complement, not replace, a national currency — much like the Swiss WIR balances the Swiss Franc. That said, GEO could in principle serve as a country’s primary in-country currency, or a Yin-type local currency could be adopted as a nation’s own currency and then integrated into the broader GEO system.
Why would I want to use GEO?
History shows that pairing a “hard asset” currency like today’s national money with a Yin-type complementary currency promotes abundance and sustainability, keeps local wealth local, encourages long-term investment, reduces scarcity thinking, strengthens relationships and community, benefits women and gender balance, promotes cooperation over competition, and preserves liberty from governmental manipulation — all while remaining asset-based rather than debt-based.
Who has control over GEO?
GGCurrency is designed to operate primarily as a Disseminated Autonomous Organization (DAO) — a self-regulating computer program kept as free as possible from human interference. It is monitored, not owned or controlled, by the GEO Foundation; ultimate control resides in the thousands of independent computers running its algorithms, not in any single institution.
Can GEO be shut down by a court order or government?
Because no single entity owns or controls the DAO, there is no straightforward jurisdiction in which a court order could compel its shutdown. Ownership resides with the users themselves, who are the real shareholders of the system.
Can I make money buying GEO the way I could with Bitcoin?
No — GEO is deliberately designed to hold a stable value rather than swing widely, so it isn’t built for speculation. Investors may instead benefit through dividends, share appreciation at defined milestones, and participation in GGTrust projects funded by the investment.
If GEO is meant to help the world, why do you need donations?
GEO is not a profit-making venture — it’s a means of exchange. GGTrust controls substantial real-world assets, but developing them (and building the GEO system itself) requires upfront capital for engineering, legal structure, and physical currency production. Donations and investment fund that early-stage work, the same way early capital did for companies like Amazon or eBay before they were categories, not companies.
How may I purchase shares?
Through the Investing page, or by contacting GGTrust directly. Initial investors receive Certificates of Financial Interest; tradable share certificates follow once sufficient funding is in place to print them.
How do we get a local currency started?
Start by forming an interest group in your community to explore whether there’s enough appetite to launch one. GGCurrency works with currency-design partners to help a community decide which type of local currency — scrip, mutual credit, or another model — fits its needs, and can typically get a standard local currency running in as little as two weeks.
Do we have to change the name of our local currency to join GEO?
No. You can keep whatever name your community already uses. A local exchange office helps establish a fair exchange rate and integrate your currency with the broader GEO network.
Key terms used throughout this site
- Alternative Currency
- A type of money used instead of an official, national money — contrast with Complementary Currency.
- Archetype
- A recurrent image that patterns human emotions and behavior, observable across time and cultures.
- Asset Backed
- Value given by connection to a real, tangible asset rather than by decree alone.
- Complementary Currency
- A type of money that works alongside national money to provide benefits it doesn’t otherwise offer.
- Counter-Cyclical
- Acting contrary to the business cycle — expanding when the broader economy contracts, and vice versa.
- Currency
- Money in circulation — a portable version of money, most commonly coins, notes, or electronic records.
- Cryptocurrency
- A form of money that uses cryptography to control its creation and management, instead of relying on central authorities.
- Demurrage
- A charge made to the owner for their use of money — the reverse of interest.
- Disseminated Autonomous Organization (DAO)
- A self-regulating computer program with no single controlling node, operating across many independent computers.
- Fiat Money
- Currency with no intrinsic value, valuable only because a government declares it to be so.
- Mutual Credit System
- An accounting system in which members are extended credit they can spend with other members, paid off with labor or goods.
- Scrip
- Unofficial local paper currency used by a community as a medium of exchange.
- Shadow (Jungian)
- The unconscious expression of a repressed archetype — the more it’s repressed, the more forcefully it surfaces in behavior.
- Trade Reference Currency
- An asset-backed international currency, like the Terra, designed to counterbalance business-cycle swings in trade.
- Yang Money
- Money that activates protection, hoarding, competition, and control — all current national currencies.
- Yin Money
- Money that activates cooperation, community, and abundance — most complementary currencies.
Choose how deep you’d like to go
Tell others, join the forums, participate, or donate
We invite you to join us in manifesting this transformation.
Donate
Fund the engineering, legal structure, and physical currency production that gets GEO to launch.
Donate →Invest
Qualified investors can purchase shares of GGTrust or GEO, backed by real assets rather than debt.
Learn about investing →Jobs
Help build the code, documentation, and community infrastructure behind the GEO system.
See open roles →What To Do Now
Not ready to donate or invest? Start by sharing what you’ve learned, and reading further.
Get started →Help us implement it
Tell others, join our forums, participate in the system, or donate — we invite you to join us in manifesting this unexpected transformation.