The recent boom in community "currencies" -- a virtual form of payment being used to promote exchanges of goodwill and business -- seems to have reached a turning point.
Although municipalities, nonprofit organizations and local businesses throughout the country have launched some 140 kinds of community currencies since 1999, few seem to have achieved the dual objectives. Indeed, organizers of community currencies have been struggling to link the virtual cash with real business, since the currencies themselves have little economic value among businesses.
In a typical community currency system, volunteers in municipality- or NPO-organized projects for cleaning up local roads and rivers receive the virtual cash as "tokens of gratitude."