Is there a financial benefit for buyers from using community currencies?
Short answer: NO, there is no financial benefits for you to expect in a local currency even if some might give tiny discounts on local sales. Local currencies are attractive for small business or communities, they are perfectly legal and starting to be popular in a lot of places. Local currencies encourage individuals and businesses to exchange goods and services locally.  Using them is like investing in your community. It could give you the feeling of doing something good for your community. Check this article for a discussion on the subject.  They should not be considered investments. Local currencies do not offer the same financial security and some could be like monopoly money, but that would be another subject or question to debate.  So, to summarize: no money to be made for your personal use, but some real social and financial benefits for your community. Would'nt that be a kind of personal benefit for you ?
Russia main reserve is Euro, Gold and Yuan. They have dumped good sums of dollar since way back. The rest of oil buyers would gladly pay russians in whatever currency they want, specially if it is non dollar. Cheap oil on cheaper currency?  Who doesn't want that?  The chinese pay their oil in Yuan. Russian gladly takes Yuan, since its the most liquid currency in pacific, not to mention china is their no.1 trading partner. Buying a house may save you money compared with renting, depending on the area and specifics of the transaction (including the purchase price, interest rates, comparable rent, etc.). In addition, buying a house may provide you with intangibles that fit your lifestyle goals (permanence in a community, ability to renovate, pride of ownership, etc.). These factors have been discussed in other answers here and in other questions. However there is one other way I think potential home buyers should consider the financial impact of home ownership: Buying a house provides you with a natural 'hedge' against possible future changes in your cost of living. Assume the following: If these two items are true, then buying a home allows you to guarantee today that your monthly living expenses will be mostly* fixed, as long as you live in that community. In 2 years, if there is an explosion of new residents in your community and housing costs skyrocket - doesn't affect you, your mortgage payment [or if you paid cash, the lack of mortgage payment] is fixed. In 3 years, if there are 20 new apartment buildings built beside you and housing costs plummet - doesn't affect you, your mortgage payment is fixed. If you know that you want to live in a particular place 20 years from now, then buying a house in that area today may be a way of ensuring that you can afford to live there in the future. *Remember that while your mortgage payment will be fixed, other costs of home ownership will be variable. See below. You may or may not save money compared with rent over the period you live in your house, but by putting your money into a house, you have protected yourself against catastrophic rent increases. What is the cost of hedging yourself against this risk? (A) The known costs of ownership [closing costs on purchase, mortgage interest, property tax, condo fees, home insurance, etc.]; (B) The unknown costs of ownership [annual and periodic maintenance, closing costs on a future sale, etc.]; (C) The potential earnings lost on your down payment / mortgage principal payments [whether it is low-risk interest or higher risk equity]; (D) You may have reduced savings for a long period of time which would limit your ability to cover emergencies (such as medical costs, unexpected unemployment, etc.) (E) You may have a reduced ability to look for a better job based on being locked into a particular location (though I have assumed above that you want to live in a particular community for an extended period of time, that desire may change); and (F) You can't reap the benefits of a rental market that decreases in real dollars, if that happens in your market over time. In short, purchasing a home should be a lifestyle-motivated decision. It financially reduces some the fluctuation in your long-term living costs, with the trade-off of committed principal dollars and additional ownership risks including limited mobility. "Do you want to split expenses of the new apartment, or split your income/assets equally too (as for instance with a marriage where no sort of ""yours, mine, and ours"" are split out)? I'm going to assume you have beliefs similar to me in my answer, in that you desire to split expenses of the new place but don't suddenly want to split all of your assets and income 50/50 too. So here's how I'd approach this. I am somewhat unsure of what you mean by ""living expenses"" for your flat. Does this mean the cost of ownership per month - what it takes to not get rid of the place - and no portion of this is interest/mortgage? To make the calculations a little simpler, I'll assume that all the money you pay out as expenses is just gone - none of it remains as equity or is dis-proportionally accumulating value in some other such way. So, you move in with your girlfriend. The cost for her place - the place itself, taxes, utilities, whatever - is 7892 per month. So since you are both getting equal use of the place, you would split this into 3946 per month for each of you. That's it. Well, I don't see how that really matters at all, anymore than if you owned a company or stocks and bonds. If you rent it out for less per month than it costs you, I don't see why your girlfriend should take any part of the loss. Conversely if you make more money per month than it costs you, that is your investment profit - the payment you get for owning the apartment and dealing with renting it out. Now if your girlfriend is going to partner with you in handling renting out the apartment you own and you want to look at this as an investment partnership, then you should pay all expenses out of the income first and then you can split the profit if you really want. One question to ask would be, what if you just sold your apartment completely? Would you give your girlfriend have the money from the sale? If not then I don't see why you would split the investment profit from holding on to the place. While this is what I recommend and would feel comfortable with personally and if the situation was reversed (and it was my girlfriend that owned a place and was moving in with me), ultimately this is about your personal values, beliefs, and relationship. You are very wise to seek something that both of you will find fair, and so you should discuss a proposed arrangement with your girlfriend and see if you are on the same page. If you are both fine with the agreement and feel OK with it, then great - none of us have to like or agree with it, because we aren't a part of your relationship. Psychologically and financially this situation seems the most reasonable to me, but YMMV. After some more thought and from comments, I realize that it's probably best to explore a few possibilities numerically. So I'll run a few sets of numbers which may help pick which one is right for your relationship. This is approximately the same as paying her ""rent"" for getting to live with her. You pay her for sharing her place, splitting the expense: 3946 paid to you. She pays the other 3946 for her place. Financially it's like being room-mates. You can do whatever you want with your place - rent or sell, hold on to it for security, etc. This deal makes your girlfriend financially better off by 3946. The financial advantage to you is wholly dependent on what you do with your place.  This option would give you each the most financial independence, which is why I like it - but you might be keen on being more interdependent.  Which leads us to the next option. Here you behave as before in splitting her expenses, but you include renting out your place as part of the deal. Let's say you get 10k a month for it. You pay the expenses on that place from the rent, then you have 2108 left as 'profit'. You split the profits monthly 1054 to each of you.  There's a bit of problem here, though - what happens when the place is vacant? Do you share the full expense of the rent, so she'd actually be paying you each month while it sits open? What about repairs, taxes (costs and credits), etc?  I would recommend instead what you do, if you go this way, to account for the apartment as an investment and don't pay out ANY of the profits right away. All rents stay in their own account, and you pay expenses from that same account. For you both it's like it doesn't exist, accept it is a nice earning asset. When you decide it has accumulated more than enough to pay for itself and has enough money to cover vacancy, repairs, etc, then when you pull out money for the duration you are together you just pay it out to both of you equally. You might also pull this ""equity"" out and spend it on something for both of you, like a nice vacation, etc - something you both enjoy, so you are still sharing the profits. I don't object to this, and it could be a nice arrangement. I would only note that this makes you have a personal relationship, you live together as roommates, and now you are co-landlords/business partners. That's a lot of types of relationships, and I can tell you from personal experience each type has it's own stresses - and this sort of stress can stack (or if you don't handle it well, multiply). So just make sure you are both clear what sort of responsibility you are really both signing up for up front, and what you'd do if you part.  Combine your apartment expenses, which would equal 14753, so that's 7376 cost to each of you a month. If you rent your place then whatever money you get you split, and whatever costs come up (repairs, cleaning, etc) you would also split. So if you get an average of 10000 a month for the apartment you each are paying living expenses of 2376 total.  But notice that this isn't exactly equal, either. You will pay 5516 less per month than you are now, and she will pay 4485 less than she was before.  There's nothing morally wrong with this or anything - it's a 100% partnership across the board. Yet advantage is still not equal - you actually will see a larger benefit to your budget than she will. But if you seek equal benefit, you will have to pay 515 a month more than she does.  This sort of thing is basically the model marriage uses, a pure 50/50 partnership, or ""communal property"". And note that one of you will either be paying more than the other, will be benefiting more than the other - no matter what you do! It's impossible to balance both costs and benefits, because your income and expenses are not the same going in. If you go this way you'll need to choose what is most important - splitting the expenses/income equally, or benefiting financially equally. So I say again, ultimately you have to choose based upon your individual and shared values, and also on just what sort of relationship and layers of commitment you want to have together. You could start slow with option 1, then progress to sharing more - that's what I'd recommend, because I like the idea of developing things one layer at a time rather than jumping in head-first (like I have personally done in the past, haha!). Once bitten twice shy, I might just be more risk-averse or careful than you desire to be, but that's a personal choice.  I personally believe the relationship can be far more valuable than any investment, but at the same time I'll take $1 over a relationship that has turned sour any day of the week. This is why I suggest the more gradual, careful approach - to let your love bloom and grow deeper one layer at a time, without the complexities of fully shared finances or investment partnership. Relationships are hard enough, so this is why I favor trying to protect them aggressively from unnecessary complexity. Some favor the ""sink or swim"" model of seeking out trials and challenges, while I favor the ""relationship as tender, growing sapling"" model. I hope seeing these options laid out more is helpful to you, and good luck to you, your relationship, and - lastly - to your investments!" But then why wouldn't that be their primary mode to control their currency now/are they starting/hinting at doing so to move away from US treasuries? There must be benefits to Treasury purchasing that seems better to them, maybe that QE can't do alone?  And I have to imagine with the tenuous nature of their financial system, the shock alone from losing access to the Dollar (and before they could use QE to devalue the currency back down) would be a major issue. "Having savings only in your home currency is relatively 'low risk' compared with other types of 'low diversification'. This is because, in a simple case, your future cash outflows will be in your home currency, so if the GBP fluctuates in value, it will (theoretically) still buy you the same goods at home. In this way, keeping your savings in the same currency as your future expenditures creates a natural hedge against currency fluctuation. This gets complicated for goods imported from other countries, where base price fluctuates based on a foreign currency, or for situations where you expect to incur significant foreign currency expenditures (retirement elsewhere, etc.). In such cases, you no longer have certainty that your future expenditures will be based on the GBP, and saving money in other currencies may make more sense. In many circumstances, 'diversification' of the currency of your savings may actually increase your risk, not decrease it. Be sure you are doing this for a specific reason, with a specific strategy, and not just to generally 'spread your money around'. Even in case of a Brexit, consider: what would you do with a bank account full of USD? If the answer is ""Convert it back to GBP when needed (in 6 months, 5 years, 30, etc.), to buy British goods"", then I wouldn't call this a way to reduce your risk. Instead, I would call it a type of investment, with its own set of risks associated." "Theoretically, it shouldn't matter which one you use.  Your return should only depend on the stock returns in SGD and the ATS/SGD exchange rate (Austrian Schillings? is this an question from a textbook?).  Whether you do the purchase ""through"" EUR or USD shouldn't matter as the fluctuations in either currency ""cancel"" when you do the two part exchange SGD/XXX then XXX/ATS. Now, in practice, the cost of exchanging currencies might be higher in one currency or the other.  Likely a tiny, tiny amount higher in EUR.  There is some risk as well as you will likely have to exchange the money and then wait a day or two to buy the stock, but the risk should be broadly similar between USD and EUR." "Congratulations!  You see the problem.  You can't get away from unstable currencies. The other problem is that the US will shut down anything that appears to be providing a replacement for the US Dollar.  Once a token or medallion or gift certificate or whatever starts being used outside the confines of one business or one network of businesses, it will be shut down, quickly.  It happened with Las Vegas gambling tokens.  Another more recent attempt was with the Liberty Dollar, gold and silver coins and certificates that not only had precious metal backing, but whose proponents encouraged taking them to retailers and paying with them as if they were US Dollars.  There were other problems with this idea, but it was the competitive stature of the Liberty dollar that got the headquarters raided and the main site shut down. Basically, all signs point toward dealing with currencies and their state of being systematically eroded over time.  If you do find one that appears to exist, be wary, because the rules can change at any time, and the ""money"" will be nowhere near as liquid as a proper currency." Is my observation that the currency exchange market is indirect correct? Is there a particular reason for this? Why isn't currency traded like stocks? I guess yes. In Stocks its pretty simple where the stock is held with a depository. Hence listing matching is simple and the exchange of money is via local clearing. Currency markets are more global and there is no one place where trades happen. There are multiple places where it happens and is loosely called Fx market place. Building a matching engine is also complex and confusing. If we go with your example of currency pair, matches would be difficult.  Say; If we were to say all transactions happen in USD say, and list every currency as item to be purchased or sold. I could put a trade Sell Trade for Quantity 100 Stock Code EUR at Price 1.13 [Price in USD]. So there has to be a buy at a price and we can match. Similarly we would have Stock Code for GBP, AUD, JPY, etc. Since not every thing would be USD based, say I need to convert GBP to EUR, I would have to have a different set of Base currency say GBP. So here the quantity would All currencies except GBP which would be price. Even then we have issues, someone using USD as base currency has quoted for Stock GBP. While someone else using GBP has quoted for Stock USD. Plus moving money internationally is expensive and doing this for small trades removes the advantages. The kind of guarantees required are difficult to achieve without established correspondence bank relationships. One heavily traded currency pair, the exchange for funds happens via CLS Bank.