The Institute for Currency Studies
How currency shapes our world.
Where did the idea of debt originate, and how did it become a medium of exchange?
The Institute for Currency Studies explores the nature of currency as an evolving relational phenomenon.
When Currency Changes
Currency in the World
The Cognitive Architecture of Currency
Our Research
Understand the mechanics.
Explore how monetary systems evolve.
Explore history, markets, and power.
Investigate the mental assumptions underlying monetary systems.
Money | Mind | Society | Systems
About the Institute
Currency is a human system.
The Institute for Currency Studies is an independent research institute examining how monetary systems function, why they take the forms they do, and what causes those forms to change.
Our work begins with the mechanics of currency and extends into history, human relationships, institutions, cognition, health and the environment. Through an interdisciplinary systems approach, we investigate recurring patterns across these fields to develop a more integrated understanding of currency and its evolution.
We are at the precipice between an old way of life, and a new way of life — defined by the way in which we choose to allocate resources.
The old way of life necessitated a particular kind of thinking, which was rooted in the idea of debt and of valuation. In this old system, one human life could be worth more than another human life. In this old system, the destruction of our vital resources for life, could be justified as a means to produce debt-based currency.
This website is set up to help you to understand how the debt-based system presented itself, as a relational pattern influencing our state of being. How and why does it change?
An Interdisciplinary Systems Approach
The Institute examines currency as part of a larger human system, identifying patterns across monetary structure, human relationships, institutions, cognition, health and the environment.
Our Approach
Monetary systems do not exist independently of the societies that create them. The Institute for Currency Studies uses an interdisciplinary systems approach to investigate relationships between the structure of currency and the broader patterns of human organization in which it operates.
Our research begins with the mechanics of debt-based currency: how money is created, circulated and extinguished; how debt and interest function over time; and the mathematical and structural constraints that emerge within the system.
We then examine these structures alongside evidence from economics, history, anthropology, sociology, linguistics, human and environmental health, and other fields. Rather than treating these disciplines as separate explanations, we look for recurring patterns and relationships across levels of analysis.
The purpose is to identify patterns, test possible relationships against available evidence, distinguish established mechanisms from interpretation and hypothesis, and develop a more integrated understanding of why monetary systems take the forms they do—and what conditions may compel those forms to change.
The Institute for Currency Studies provides resources for understanding the nature of debt-based currency as a basis for how and why we once experienced life, and what is present for us now. We offer bespoke research and consulting services. Contact us here.
Latest Research
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