Straight answers

No. There is no coin, no token, no mining and nothing to invest in or speculate on. Mutual credit is closer to a shared tab between neighbours than to Bitcoin: credits are created when members trade with each other, and all balances add up to zero. Technomutualism borrows one good idea from the blockchain world, records that can't be quietly changed, and leaves the rest. More on blockchain.

No. Nobody's home or savings are taken, the state doesn't run the economy, and markets and prices stay. It's closer to market socialism and to the co-operative tradition: people own and govern the things they use together, by choice. You join because it's useful, and you can leave whenever you like.

Neither. Technomutualism loves technology; the "techno" is in the name. It's against one thing: a few owners collecting rent from everyone who has to use their platforms. The same phones, apps and networks can be owned by the people who use them instead.

Some will. Technology can't make people honest. What it can do is take away the easiest hiding places: secret ledgers, rules that change on a whim, money printed for friends. The rest needs open governance and people who keep watching. We're upfront about the limits. Co-operatives, credit unions and mutual credit networks have worked for well over a century with far worse tools.

It is a co-op idea, with better tools. Traditional co-operatives were limited by paperwork, by distance and by trusting a few officers. Software owned by the members does the bookkeeping, signed records keep it honest, and federation lets thousands of small communities trade without becoming one big organisation.

No permission is needed to trade with your neighbours, though the law still applies. In many countries trades count as income for tax even when no cash changes hands, and rules about credit and payments differ from place to place. A community should check its local rules and keep honest records. The software makes that easier, not harder.

The word was coined on 1 October 2026 by the people behind The BeanPool Project, to name what they had been building. But a movement belongs to whoever takes it up. Nobody owns technomutualism, and we hope plenty of people build things under it that have nothing to do with us.

Yes, freely, with no permission needed. Call your project technomutualist, write about it, teach it, argue with it. The text on this site is under a Creative Commons licence too: copy it and translate it, as long as you credit it and share alike.

Technomutualism aims for privacy for people and transparency for power. Your own trades and messages should be yours. The decisions and spending of anyone with power over shared things should be open to the members. This website itself sets no cookies, runs no tracking and loads nothing from other companies.

• Start a community. See how to start.
• Build. BeanPool's code is open, and so is this site's.
• Translate. These pages would reach far more people in more languages. Translations are welcome on GitHub.
• Talk about it. Share the idea, challenge it, improve it. Use #Technomutualism.