Digital Barter Economy

A digital barter economy is an arrangement in which people or businesses exchange goods, services or digital assets directly with one another through online platforms, rather than paying with conventional money. Traditional barter struggles with the double coincidence of wants: each side must want exactly what the other offers. Digital platforms ease that problem by matching many participants at once, recording credits and, in some cases, chaining trades among several parties. Business barter exchanges have used online credit systems for decades, and blockchains extend the idea with token-for-token swaps and NFT trades settled automatically by smart contracts. In practice most systems still value trades in a common unit, which brings them close to a form of money. Barter income is generally taxable at fair market value in many countries. Also see medium of exchange.