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.

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.

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.

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!

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.

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.

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.

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.