How can I start a Circles community where I live?

Great to hear you are interested in starting a Circles community in your area.

A great place to start is reading our handbook here.

 

You could also start a TG group for your region and we could announce it in our general Circles groups to invite people to join your group. We are happy to support you via our SM channels if you are willing to work on the hub. Once you create an initial network, it would be a collective effort to keep the local economy with Circles.

You could also read our FAQ and follow our Berlin pilot project to get more ideas. Starting out is not easy, but once the initiative is formed, you could share the responsibility with the whole community. Please, share your challenges with us and let us know how we can support you. Let us know if you need anything.

There is no Circles community in my area. How can I use it?

In order to use Circles, you need a community where products or services are being offered for CRC. If there is no existing community where you live, you could take the initiative to establish one. We would be very happy to support you. Read more in our FAQ on how you can help build a local economy using Circles. Alternatively, you can browse the Circles Marketplace for your needs and upload any offerings.

How do I gain trust within the Circles community?

You can request trust by sharing a link to your profile, or in person by having someone scan your profile QR code.

You can also come to our monthly General Assembly in Berlin to meet the team.

We also organize regular online trust parties. We announce these parties on our Circles General Telegram Chat. You can visit our social media channels to find out when they are happening.

 

But please keep in mind that even though gaining trust from random people doesn’t directly harm you or your tokens, giving your trust to random people does (the value of your Circles tokens (CRC) might decrease). In the Circles system, trusting other accounts should be like trusting other people in the real world.

What are trust limits?

Every trust connection in Circles has a direction (“from” and “to”). But to make sure a fake account won’t drain your balance, trust connections also limit the amount of Circles tokens you can spend with a connection. Once you reach this limit, you can’t spend any more Circles tokens with this connection, until the sender has more Circles tokens on their account.

In a healthy Circles economy, with a rich web of authentically trustful connections, we won’t reach these limits very often - though it may still happen from time to time.

Trust limits also protect you from losing all your own tokens through transitive transactions. This can happen when someone uses your tokens to send Circles through you to someone else.

A trust limit is the percentage (0-100%) of your Circles supply that you are willing to hold in a given person’s tokens. Example: I trust you 50%, which means the amount of my own Circles tokens I hold since I signed up is 100, therefore I am willing to hold max 50 of your tokens.

The current default limit is always set to 50% which is very high, and we might lower it in the future, or cancel it completely.

How do different Circles groups relate to one another?

From a social point of view, each local Circles group is autonomous and should have the ability to organize their own economy based on their particular circumstances. If you’d like to set up your local group and need support, please check out the question “How can I help build a local economy using Circles?” above or give us a holler at hello@joincircles.net

From a technical point of view, there will be groups who might create different interfaces or even completely new versions of the Circles system. We welcome decentralization when it means we can share the work done so far and help each other along the way. If you’d like to work with us and create new iterations of the Circles system, please email us at bitspossessed@joincircles.net We want to hear from you!

If two businesses have similar accounts, how do I make sure I pay the right business?

If you’d like to buy something from a particular business, but not sure if the account (which we call Wallet) belongs to them, send them a message!

 

Make sure you have the right username and link for the business or Shared Wallet. Also, check if they trust you so they can receive payment from you directly.

I want to be a community organizer for Circles UBI in my area. What do I do to get started?

That’s fantastic!

 

You can join our international assemblies online. We hold these on the last Wednesday of every month. You can find out more and see how you can organize your hub in our international assemblies Telegram chat and on our social media channels.

But you can also send us a friendly email at hello@joincircles.net.

You say Circles works best in communities, in hubs. What does that mean? Can it spread around the globe just like my real trust connections?

Circles works best where there are local communities with economic connections.

 

In this sense, Circles networks are a reflection of “real life” networks. And they can be global if you have connections with people in different countries. But for a Circles hub to grow, a local network of suppliers and users/consumers is essential.

How can I help build a local economy using Circles?

To build a living, stable, basic income system with Circles, you have to invite people and organizations who bring value to the local community, and discuss the goods that can be covered by basic income: food, housing, care, transportation, basic services, etc.

Here are some examples of organizations and people, who bring value to the community: onboarding businesses, community organizers, people who sell cupcakes, people who’d like to sell their bikes in exchange for Circles tokens (CRC), people who will help their friends move and get paid for that in CRC, local farmers markets, local bike distribution alternatives, and so on.

With passion for local communities and with actual merchants who trade with one another within the system, Circles can take off and fly. And once that happens, we’ll be able to better support those who truly need basic income, but are not in the position to give anything in return.

Don’t forget: Circles is about giving as much as it is about taking: real, people-powered basic income can only come to life, when there’s unconditional reciprocity between members of the community who exchange goods and services for basic income. If businesses can exchange their tokens for the goods and services that they use, accepting CRC will not only be an act of solidarity, but their business interest as well.

We know from experience that bootstrapping a local economy can be challenging creative work! Feel free to get in touch with the Circles Coop and let us know about the approaches you’re taking, and what has worked for you. We, at the Circles Coop, are always curious about different strategies, and we’d also love to see the types of communities sprouting using Circles. We will soon be in a position to support local economies in various ways.

Read more about how to get organized in our handbook.