Obelio - About Obelio

Content

The Purpose of Obelio

The established monetary system, by means of its interest mechanism and other factors, causes a steady redistribution of capital from "bottom" to "top". In result a growing amount of wealth is accumulating in the hands of few persons and organisations, whereas the majority of people is slowly sinking into poverty.

Therefore, money is too scarce where it is needed most: As a facilitator of services exchange from man to man. For example, many work seekers can't find purchasers of their skills, because those who need such service simply don't have enough purchasing power to afford it. Actually, just an appropriate medium of exchange is needed to reflate giving and taking at the "bottom", thus allowing everybody to prosper.

This gap is increasingly filled by barter communities which operate in accordance with the LETS (Local Exchange Trading System) principle. LETS participants barter goods and services in exchange for a limited amount of self-created clearing units (sometimes called "community currencies"). These clearing units help maintaining a balance of giving and taking as well as stimulating neighbourly help.

The Obelio eLETS Service is a barter trading portal and an online accounting service for LETS communities. The name "eLETS" stands for "electronic LETS". This means the administrative operations and accounting transactions can be performed electronically, i.e. via the computer and the Internet. This way, Obelio supports LETS communities to fully take advantage of the Internet for their barter purposes.

Obelio supports a blended online/offline operation of LETS. By means of LETS cheques (or barter booklets respectively) and printed market journals even those LETS members can participate who have no access to the Internet. In this case the administrators of the respective LETS community function as intermediaries between the "paper world" and the "Internet world" by typing in the advertisements and the offline members' LETS transactions into Obelio, as well as creating a printed market journal via Obelio.

Obelio is provided as a web service in order to reduce the accounting effort of the LETS back offices. With the Obelio web service LETS offices no longer have a need to operate their own accounting server and software.

Obelio put great emphasis on maintaining the sovereignty of LETS groups over their individual market rules and data. However, these market rules have to be compatible with the General Terms & Conditions of the Obelio eLETS Service.

Status

The Obelio eLETS Service started operations in December 2005. Obelio is a branch of Fundamentech GbR, which is a high-tech company founded in the year 2000 (see Contact). As of March 2008 the following six LETS communities were working with Obelio:

	LETS Tauschkreis München-Nord
	LETS Tauschring München
	Tauschring Nordheide
	KJR-M Tauschring
	AcrossLETS
	Marburger Tauschring

By March 2008 approximately 1400 subscribers were registered in Obelio with about 2000 stored advertisements. Of these subscribers about 400 had listed an email account and about 200 were working online with Obelio (having their own login password). Approximately 1200 subscribers were working offline, i.e. with barter booklets or cheques.

At the same time about 18,000 account entries and transactions were stored in the Obelio database.

Services Overview

Obelio is providing the following services to barter communities:

Management of clearing accounts for barter, view of the account statement
On-line payments, wire transfers, direct debiting, and standing orders for clearing accounts
Collection and redistribution of hording fees (demurrage) with definable rules
Automatic transfer of member fees (in clearing units) to the LETS organisations
A blended online/offline LETS operation is possible by means of electronically signed LETS cheques (or barter booklets respectively)
Management of classified advertisements: Entering, searching, displaying, modifying and deleting ads via the Internet
Editible category structure, which can be adjusted to the needs of the respective LETS community
Data export for preparing a printed market journal for a barter community, Microsoft Word layout template
Anonymised market journal for guests. This function is accessible as a hyperlink embedded in other web pages.
Comprehensive link collection about barter communities, LETS economics, and money theory
Hosting services for the web sites of LETS organisations
Personal web space allowing members to publish illustrated detailed information about their offerings
A spam-protected messaging service for the closed user group of members: Messages, orders, billing with automatic LETS credit assessment, reclamations. Message forwarding to email is possible.
A powerful search engine for the Obelio content (advertisements, account names / contact data, subscribers, account balances, messages, transactions, etc.)
High data security: Only registered subscribers have access, password protection, SSL encryption, frequent data backup
Graded roles and rights management: Allocation of proxy rights and administrative rights
Multi-lingual user interface (currently supported: German, English and Italian), easily extendible
Data import from other software programs or tables (Microsoft Excel, CSV, etc.)
Guest login: Everybody can explore the functionality of Obelio online, including the administrative functions
Software maintenance: Error diagnosis and promt bug fixing
User support via email and phone plus additional complementary services
Multi-tenant capabilities: Each barter community constitudes a closed user group in Obelio having a separate set of advertisements and an independent clearing unit
Each LETS community defines its own set of market rules in Obelio: Initial account balance, procedure for leaving participants, subscriber fees, overdraft limit, name of the clearing unit, category structure, foreign exchange accounts, etc.
Minimal dependencies: At any time LETS communities can export the entire data inventory (in CSV, Excel, etc.) of their community for shifting operation to their own server system. The Obelio software can also be downloaded free of charge for self operation.
Statistical analysis: The number of participants, advertisements and barter transactions, the circulation velocity and circulation quantity of the clearing units, etc.
Mechanisms for old-age pensions on a LETS basis: A "hording-free" pension account and automatic pension payments

Future Development Plan

The software which the Obelio eLETS service is based upon will be continually improved and adopted to the needs of the respective LETS communities. Among others the following functions are on the list of planned enhancements:

Management of mailing lists, printing of address labels
Automatic stock tracking to avoid orders for out of stock items
Editorial articles about LETS economy and the monetary system
Supra-regional transfer of clearing units via foreign trade accounts. Mechanisms which maintain a long-term balance of the import and export volumes
Distribution of the Obelio software among several servers to further improve availability and performance

The Supraregional LETS Community "AcrossLETS"

The users registered at the Obelio eLETS service are automatically participants in the supraregional LETS community "AcrossLETS". They own a clearing account in this community, which can be used for barter activity. Usage of this account is voluntary.

Among others the purpose of AcrossLETS is to provide users of the Obelio eLETS service with a platform for advertisements and supraregional barter working across different LETS communities. For example, this can be used for accommodations in remote cities.

The same Advertisements can be published both in the respective LETS community and in AcrossLETS without copying the text.

Additionally, AcrossLETS has the goal to exemplarily implement market rules which

hinder unwanted and uncontrolled increase of the circulating clearing units cause by quitting members with negativ account balances,
hinder massiv hording of clearing units,
implement a LETS-based system for old-age pensions,
make LETS revisible for the participants, especially in respect of the circulating amount of clearing units,
and establish simple mechanisms (via foreign exchange accounts) for supraregional exchange without losing control about the stability of the LETS.

Obelio Software Download

LETS communities which want to operate their own web server for managing their system can download the Obelio software free of charge at this link: tportal, Linux version for a single LETS community

The hardware and software requirements as well as an installation guide can be found here:
README.txt

In case you need a newer version of the software or you need help during the installation, please contact Fundamentech GbR.

Obelio is Not a Bank

Obelio does not provide any financial services. For example, you cannot borrow money from Obelio. The balances of the clearing accounts are not convertible to currencies like euro or dollar. Likewise, you can't increase your clearing account balance by paying money to Obelio. All account transfers are confined to clearing accounts of the barter communities.

According to the principles of LETS each new member is bringing a fixed amount of clearing units into circulation through entering the respective community. This can be done by providing an initial account balance or by allowing a certain overdraft limit. When a member quits the community, the same amount of clearing units will be withdrawn from circulation.

This mechanism is either fully computer-automated or administered by the LETS communities. The details are determined by the market rules of the respective community. Obelio as an organisation assumes no role of actively controlling the total amount of circulating clearing units. Obelio is not the creator of the clearing units. The Obelio software merely keeps track of clearing account balances and barter transactions.

Obelio doesn't store the medium of exchange. The judicial storage location of the LETS clearing units are the paper printouts of the account statements including the account balances, which Obelio users (or their LETS organisation on behalf of them) produce via the Obelio eLETS service.

The clearing accounts kept by Obelio are shadow accounts in the sense of a book-keeping software. The accounted clearing units are not electronic media of exchange as defined by the Electronic Money Directive of the European Union.

The clearing units of LETS communities working with Obelio are not money in the sense of a legal tender.

For all these reasons Obelio does not participate in the clearing mechanism of banks and is not subject to banking supervision.