Hub Culture's social currency, Ven, has now traded over 1,000,000 units since its broad inception in 2007. The usage of the currency and reaction among members has created a set of insights that are changing the way we see money and value in an internet based economy. Core to this understanding is a shift in understanding of the very nature of money itself - away from a basis on scarcity (which we've been taught to accept) and toward a basis of information exchange. This idea of money as information, tracking our debits and credits owed to others in our network, is at the root of a fundamental democratization of money.

This is set to have enormous consequences for both the internet and the global economy at large -especially in regard to our relationships with finance and financial institutions.