Shareable reports:

These professional communities already serve as havens for people who believe in wacky ideas like career independence, collaboration, and the local economy. Coworkers are already in the habit of coming together to discuss ideas, share feedback, and leverage their people power into savings and innovation. The nature of coworking spaces and the people who choose to work in them makes these communities a fertile breeding ground for new types of collaborative consumption.

Recently, coworking spaces around the world have begun spilling over into another economic alternative–local, alternative and complementary currencies. These are actual units of value that can be traded for goods and services, only they’re not created by the Federal Reserve or any other government body–they’re created by people for people.

While some alternative currencies operate more like time-banks, in which service hours earn you a certain dollar amount, others operate parallel to traditional currencies, with actual value that can be redeemed at local banks.

In both cases, these alternatives to government currency focus spending power in the local community…

http://www.shareable.net/blog/coworking-spaces-use-alternative-currencies-to-magnify-community