From Bitcoin Wallets to Time Wallets: Community-focused Currencies

As more and more people start using Bitcoin, Bitcoin wallet applications are starting to emerge around the world. When we are just getting familiar with running digital currency wallets, a new virtual wallet has emerged – the time wallet. The time wallet is a newly emerging concept that can store time units as currency.

Time is money

Have you heard of "timebank" before? If not, don't worry, you are not the only one who hasn't heard of it. The concept of timebank may be unfamiliar to us, just as the concept of Bitcoin and blockchain technology is to others. So let me briefly introduce what timebank is.

Timebank is essentially a trading system where community members can trade time units for services. In this system, time becomes currency. Members using the system can provide tips, skills, expertise, and inspiration to each other to earn more time. Then use the earned time to obtain services from others. Get it?

Let’s take a real-life example. Let’s take Alice and Bob as an example. These two fictional characters often appear in articles explaining Bitcoin.

Alice is in the gift card business and wants to learn how to use blockchain technology to improve her business. So she goes to a timebank exchange, searches for "blockchain technology", and finds that Bob is selling 1 hour of blockchain technology consulting services. Alice decides to use the 1 hour she earns doing graphic design for other members of the timebank community to exchange for Bob's consulting services. Bob provides consulting services to Alice, so Bob also earns 1 hour, and then he uses this 1 hour to exchange for Carol's local dog walking services.

Are there any current use cases for time banks?

From the above examples, we can see that in this community, people freely exchange skills and experience, and time is the currency of this community. This is a very interesting concept, and it may be worth your time to understand it. However, time banking is not a new concept, and there are already similar use cases.

This time-based sharing economy company is called TimeRepublik. TimeRepublik is an online time bank market where people can make full use of their free time and gain value from it.

Imagine a brand new market economy where people use non-government-issued currencies for transactions. However, the currency in circulation in this market economy is not Bitcoin. Instead, the market economy runs in parallel with Bitcoin, and its currency is “time”.

Time is interchangeable and the same for everyone, but how we use it can make the difference between us. What TimeRepublik does is to make it easier for people around the world to exchange time, because after all, time cannot be bought, it can only be exchanged.