Ithaca HOURS

What Are Ithaca HOURS?

The Ithaca HOUR is a local currency issued and used in Ithaca, NY. It is designed to encourage patronage of local businesses in Ithaca and surrounding communities and to prevent that money from leaving the local economy. The value of one HOUR is pegged at $10 and is a time-based currency system where one hour of any work is equivalent to another hour of work. There are more than $100,000 of Ithaca HOURS in circulation.

The United States government does not back it, and companies in Ithaca are not required to accept it.

Understanding Ithaca Hours

In 1991, Paul Glover launched the new Ithaca currency and set the value of an HOUR at $10. This new value was the approximate average hourly pay in Ithaca at the time. Glover hoped that the HOURS project would keep money in the local economy, and avoid the social and economic costs which he associated with the increasingly global financial system. Glover promoted the HOURS aggressively, and by the end of 1991, about 20 local businesses had pledged to accept the new currency. That number grew into the hundreds during the 1990s.

Since then, dozens of U.S. communities have followed Ithaca's lead and introduced local currencies designed to promote local business and limit the movement of that currency to a particular locality. In most cases, the local currencies are intended to operate alongside U.S. dollars. Like social media today, these currencies benefit from the network effect, as more people and businesses use the system, the benefits that they can derive increase. 

Ithaca Hours, the Local Currency. Institute for Money, Technology and Financial Inclusion / Flickr

Ithaca Hours and Online Payments

The HOURS system relied more fundamentally on the evangelism of its founder, who worked full-time to educate residents and business owners of the uses for HOURS.

The rise in electronic payment systems, plus Glover's departure from Ithaca, contributed to a steady decrease in the use of HOURS in the early 2000s. Efforts to revive the currency have yet to take hold. An organization known as Ithacash had attempted to introduce internet-based local currency called "Ithaca Dollars." This currency was not issued in physical form. Ithacash operated an online marketplace where users could transact in Ithaca or U.S. dollars. However, the project's website is no longer operational, and its Twitter presence hasn't been updated since 2017.