There's a novel experiment unfolding in the bucolic Berkshire mountains of Western Massachusetts — one with implications for where, and how, crypto might work its way into day-to-day life. At the Berkshire Food Co-Op in Great Barrington, Mass., you can see which local farm grew your produce, pick up a “reclaimed wheat stalk eco mug” and, as of this harvest, pay for it all in cryptocurrency. The currency isn't Bitcoin, with its high carbon emissions, or the many private cryptocurrencies backed by venture capitalist. Instead, the co-op is working with a pioneer of the farm-to-table movement to use a technology often associated with unfettered global capitalism for a different end: radical localism. The launch this spring of the Digital Berkshares cryptocurrency marks the latest step in a decades-long effort to foster a self-sufficient economy in the Berkshire Mountains, a popular retreat for affluent, educated Northeasterners. As globalization has continued its steady march, that autonomy has remained elusive. But now, as the rise of blockchain technology prompts a broad rethinking of money and a widespread push for deglobalization gains steam, the effort’s backers have found a new opening. To exploit it, they’ve enlisted the help of only-in-the-Berkshires early adopters like a ukulele factory, a wandering jester and a prominent local witch. But the currency’s backers insist it’s more than a quirky pet project. The same technology that’s launched a thousand get-rich-quick schemes, they argue, can also help America’s rural regions get rich slowly. “We’re not in a three-year project or a five-year project,” said Berkshares overseer Susan Witt, who, as the co-founder of the Schumacher Center for a New Economics, has been trying to break the dollar’s monopoly on American money since the 1980s. “It’s more like a 50-year project.” Witt has been closely involved in two previous schemes to launch a Berkshires alternative to the dollar, one of which is still in circulation, and considered a success in the obscure world of local currencies. When she started to attend crypto gatherings, beginning with the Miami Bitcoin conference in January 2016, Witt, now 75, recalled being the oldest person in the room, wearing pink among a sea of hundreds of young men in black. “I loved it,” she said. “I was learning so much.” Because of Berkshares’ status as an alternative money pioneer, she enjoyed a minor celebrity among crypto enthusiasts, and Witt said she feels a kinship with some of the anarchist impulses — which favored local control — that fostered Bitcoin’s development. But she also looks askance at the financial speculation and globalizing tendencies that surround the technology, and said she rejected several offers to convert Berkshares into a cryptocurrency. But she ultimately decided that her ambitions required going digital with Berkshares: A digital system would enable more and larger transactions while generating detailed data about how the currency is being used. The result: Digital Berkshares went live in April with the launch of a smartphone wallet app, and is now one of the most interesting experiments in grassroots use of crypto as a real alternative monetary system. For the full story, and the update on how it's going, read Ben's dispatch from Great Barrington on POLITICO Magazine .
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