If you have been reading what I have been writing you will know that a transition of banks from intermediary to service provider has always been a cornerstone of the architecture I advocate.

If there isn't a mechanism for this, consumers will effectively be trading the pool directly, which will be an interesting thing to watch.

Consumers buy physical electricity from the supplier at the market price. They pay for it either with £ or Units. What's difficult about that? If consumers think Units are good value, they buy them from the Pool or from their mates: if they don't they won't.

Re units as currency generally, I am proposing unitising location rental value and certain forms of energy, particularly electricity.

That's it.

Unitising other commodities etc would not necessarily result in fungible currencies - probably wouldn't.

The former are domestically fungible/ acceptable in exchange. They may be acceptable elsewhere, but would not be redeemable elsewhere of course. ie an element of exchange control is pretty much built in.

The latter are pretty much universally acceptable.

The "Value Standard" or Unit of measure would IMHO best be a unit of energy, rather than an arbitrary abstract £, $ or € with no basis on anything.

What is more stable than a unit of energy as a reference point? A currency consisting of units redeemable in electricity would be pretty much universal,I think, and for a transitional period, and possibly longer, since carbon fules may be synthesised, Units redeemable in carbon fuels will also be universally acceptable against an energy standard.

A Peer to Peer financial system - like any other - needs some form of quality control or framework of trust. How that may be accountable and democratic in a participative way is a matter for agreement between the users of the service and the providers.

"The future is already here -- it's just not very evenly distributed" William Gibson