Frequently Asked Questions

About Ven

Ven is a digital social currency used to share, buy, sell and trade in the world of Hub Culture and beyond. The value of Ven floats against other currencies and the price is based on a basket of currencies, commodities and carbon futures.

2. Why would I want to use a virtual currency like Ven?

Ven is efficient - allowing exchanges and trades instantly to others in your network.  It works just like regular money, and has full value and price stability.  Using Ven is a little like stepping off the plane on a small Pacific island, where the local currency will get you anything available on the island among the community of users.

3. Is Ven a local currency?

In a sense yes - because it is used among a local community of networked users - first Hub Culture members, and beyond that those who choose to accept and trade based on its value.  One key difference is that Ven is not based on geography like most local currencies, but instead by sociography: it is used everywhere, but only among a select group of users.

4. Can I trade my Ven back to national currencies like the Dollar, Euro or Pound?

Not easily, but you can use it to buy thousands of items in the Ven economy, to trade to others instantly, and to keep score on transactions with your friends or other organizations.  As more developers add functions to Ven, and more websites enable their pages to accept Ven payments, the universe of items you can engage with using Ven grows, making the currency ever more relevant to its community of users.  If you can get what you want using the currency, there's no reason to need to cash out to a national currency.

5. Why is Ven priced in a basket?

A basket of goods - including currencies, commodities and carbon futures, make up the value of Ven.  This makes Ven very stable, because no single unit has a very strong influence relative to the other influences in the basket.  This helps Ven hold its value over time, by tracking lots of factors in the economy - including environmental stress.  Over time, the Ven has remained much more stable than single national currencies.  Less volatility means better planning and less risk - a great thing for anyone trading "real" goods and services, especially across borders.  The global nature of Hub Culture and its members make such a global currency very useful.

Coding with Ven and Hub

1. Are there APIs?

Yes, we are working on developing APIs to help people use Ven more widely. These are available by signing up at Ven.VC and filling out the developer application in your profile section.  For hub itself, these APIs allow pricing visibility and other aspects of Ven to be used and developed.

We need help from developers like yourself to extend the platform in new ways. Please let us know how you would like to use these tools or what tools you need, and we'll try to help get them to you.

2. What about Machines and IoT?

We're working to build Ven to be used for machine to machine trades and in the IoT. If you can help, we'd really like to discuss this with you.