ALBERTA MONETARY AUTHORITY Currency Rating Report No. 1 November 2026

🏆 ALBERTA MONETARY AUTHORITY Currency Rating Report No. 1 November 2026

Every rating in this report answers one question: “*Does a poor family gain — in security, purchasing power, or freedom from debt — by using or holding this money?”*

We do not ask whether a currency is convenient for banks, stable for governments, or profitable for issuers. Those questions have been answered for two centuries. This report answers the other one.

The Alberta Monetary Authority is an independent research initiative. It is not a government body, a credit rating organization registered under any securities act, an investment dealer, or an issuer of money. Ratings are analytical opinions, not endorsements or guarantees.

📊 THE RATING CRITERIA

OWNERSHIP (25%) Does the holder truly possess the money, with no promise owed by someone else? A coin in your hand passes every test. An IOU on someone’s balance sheet fails them.

INTEREST COST (25%) Is the medium itself a debt carrying interest? Money born as debt taxes the poor twice: once when they borrow it, forever as it circulates.

LOCAL RETENTION (20%) When spent, does the money keep working in the community, or does it leave for a distant shareholder?

ACCESSIBILITY (15%) Can a family living wage to wage actually earn, hold, and spend it — without credit checks, minimum balances, or expensive equipment?

TRANSPARENCY (10%) Are the backing, rules, and governance visible and verifiable by ordinary holders, not just insiders?

LIQUIDITY (10%) How wide is acceptance? A perfect store of value that buys nothing helps no one facing a grocery bill.

📉 THE RATINGS (10 POINT SCALE)

🥇 PHYSICAL GOLD COIN: 10/10 A poor family that owns a gold coin holds real wealth no bank, government, or employer can devalue or confiscate — though most poor families can never afford to buy one.

🥈 PHYSICAL SILVER COIN: 9/10 Silver offers the same true-ownership protection as gold at a price a working family can actually save toward.

🥉 WAMPUM (1600s–1800s): 8/10 Shell beads let ordinary people hold savings outside any banker’s ledger, until overproduction inflated away what the poorest had saved.

🏅 BEAVER PELTS (1600s): 7/10 A trapper’s catch was money in his own hands rather than a bank’s promise, but rot and disputed grading meant the poorest bore the spoilage risk.

📜 CALGARY DOLLAR (1995–present): 7.5/10 Interest-free purchasing power that stays among local merchants and even covers rent and groceries through housing partnerships — if the family finds enough shops that take it.

📜 NORTH WEST COMPANY TOKEN, 1820: 7/10 Canada’s most interesting monetary experiment: a commodity-backed token issued by a Canadian-founded company with more trading posts than its rival, tied to a real beaver pelt rather than an empty promise — rated higher than the later company scrip precisely because the issuer could be shopped around, competed with, and ultimately had to answer to the market.

📜 LETS NETWORKS: 6/10 Neighbours credit each other’s hours without banks or interest, though hours won’t feed children if nobody nearby sells food.

📜 TORONTO DOLLAR (1995–2013): 6/10 While alive it honestly backed every note with real dollars; its collapse left holders clutching worthless paper, teaching the poor that community money can vanish overnight.

📜 COMMUNITY EXCHANGE SYSTEM: 5/10 Lets families trade without cash they don’t have, but so little flows through it that it rarely pays an actual bill.

📜 TIME BANKS: 5/10 Your hour equals anyone’s hour — dignifying for the poor — yet time credits won’t pay rent, fuel, or medicine.

📜 HBC MADE BEAVER TOKENS (1854–1910): 6.5/10 Tying pay to one prime beaver skin beat an empty IOU, yet the trapper could spend only at the company’s own post where the company set the prices.

₿ BITCOIN: 4/10 A poor holder can truly own it without anyone’s permission, but one bad month of price swings can wipe out savings the family could not afford to lose.

💲 STABLECOINS (USDT / USDC): 3/10 Quick and cheap to move, but the poor end up holding a private company’s promise written in another country’s debt-money.

🛒 CANADIAN TIRE NOTES: 2.5/10 No interest is charged, but a poor family’s savings are trapped on one chain’s shelves and evaporate if the company fails.

🏪 7-ELEVEN GIFT CARDS: 2/10 Value locked to foreign-owned convenience stores, bleeding quietly through dormancy fees while the family waits.

🎁 PC OPTIMUM / AIR MILES: 2/10 Points pretend to reward loyalty while silently losing value, keeping poor shoppers loyal to chains that drain money out of town.

🛒 SASKATCHEWAN MERCHANT TOKENS (1900s–1960s): 2/10 Store tokens solved the coin shortage for farmers, but every cent earned stayed on the issuer’s shelf at the issuer’s prices.

💵 CANADIAN DOLLAR: 1/10 It buys anything anywhere, which keeps a poor family alive, but it arrives as somebody’s debt carrying interest, and inflation steals their savings a little more each year.

⚠️ COMPANY-TOWN SCRIP (historical): 0.5/10 Workers were paid in notes spendable only at the company store at company prices, chaining the poorest family to the employer who owed them wages.

🃏 PLAYING-CARD MONEY (New France): 0.5/10 The Crown repeatedly printed card money to fund its wars, quietly robbing ordinary households of whatever savings those cards represented.

📄 DOWNLOAD THE FULL PDF REPORT

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🔖 DISCLAIMERS

• Not investment advice; not a credit rating as defined under the Bank Act or provincial securities legislation. • The Alberta Monetary Authority issues no currency and guarantees none. • Historical ratings assess instruments as experienced by the poor of their own era. • Ratings reviewed annually or upon material change.

Issued by the Alberta Monetary Authority November 2026 · Report No. 1 · Rating basis: the household with the least margin for error.

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