Loan-granting closed-circuit credit
Established Alternative Game position: Modify
Prototype: WIR Bank (Switzerland)
A closed-circuit business credit network using an internal unit convertible only within the circle, letting Swiss SMEs extend credit directly.
Structural profile
Topology view
Architecture
- Game position
- Modifies the game; peer credit within a closed circuit
- Value-signal richness
- Single unit pegged to national currency; circulation-bounded
- Accumulation regime
- Enables accumulation but non-convertibility constrains hoarding
Medium-of-Exchange Properties
- Divisibility
- Finely divisible, pegged 1:1 to Swiss francs in granularity.
- Uniformity (Fungibility)
- Fungible within the closed circuit — any WIR credit is interchangeable with any other.
- Durability
- Durable as ledger credit — nearly a century of continuous operation at WIR Bank.
- Portability
- Deliberately non-portable outside the closed circuit — non-convertibility to national currency is the whole point.
- Acceptability
- Broad within its member network (WIR Bank's Swiss SME base), zero outside it by design.
Operation
- Coordination / discovery
- Bounded-trust at entry; price-aggregation within circle
- Governance & issuance
- Bank-issuer with collateral requirements; member governance
- Scale & federation
- Regional typically; non-convertibility constrains scale
Anthropological assumptions
- Default ethical orientation
- Smithian; self-interest within mutual-credit bounds
- Accumulative drive
- Drive accepted but non-convertibility constrains hoarding
- Status / recognition
- Encoded but circumscribed by closed-circle membership
- Time preference
- Variable — WIR itself has run for 90+ years and its loans amortize over years, but the closed-circuit business-credit mechanism takes no fixed position on time horizon of its own.
In Practice
- Track record
-
Operating continuously since 1934, WIR Bank remains one of the longest-running, best-documented mutual-credit systems in the world, still serving a substantial share of Swiss SMEs . - Governance requirements
- Requires membership in the WIR Bank cooperative, open to any incorporated Swiss business.
- Resource requirements
- No new infrastructure — WIR credit substitutes for working capital through an existing business banking relationship.