An Asgardian currency will not particularly facilitate Asgardian trade, nowhere else accepts it. It will create problems. Far more problems than it solves, least of all in it's maintainence and distribution.

For an example, lets pretend I whore robotic labour to produce custom goods. You buy my goods, but pay me in Astards. This sounds like a reasonable arrangement until you realise my energy supplier to run the plant doesn't accept Astards and even worse, none of the suppliers for the materials required for anything I can make accepts them, either. If it was possible to convert from Astard to a more common accepted currency form then this is most unlikely to occur without transaction cost, so either reduce the value to me in this transaction, or you when I compensate for this by raising the cost via that currency.

Even worse is manual labour - as random citizens of other nations(pure Asgardian employment unfeasible in most sectors) are incredibly unlikely to accept payment in anything other than the native currency, unless the local currency is really, really, poor. They need it because all their bills are in their native currency. Personally, I'd be more prepared to accept payment by the way of good wishes than the currency of a recently founded micronation claiming a native soil of space and seemingly featuring not a great deal of care, attention, or effort to any of the really important details. But there again, I am kind of biased against currency in the first place.

At best, it could facilitate trade between Asgardians - but only if they actually have physical contact, else this trade is more than likely to require postage, and a second currency increasing the complexity to the level of existing systems. And as previously highlighted, they'd have nothing really to be able to spend this on - the resource will rapidly pool in large amounts in few pockets, and they'll have little way to rid themselves of it. This is not something that would be entirely right to describe as a "functional economy".

There is a precedent in my country, in a really poor region the community, commerce and initiative of a residents' association have created a social bank that lends money to people who do not have access to regular credit. But the loan is made in an alternative currency that is only accepted by merchants in the community, so money can only circulate in the community. Traders go to the social bank and exchange for currency to buy from outside suppliers.

So the idea is this; Asgardia has its currency to be used among its members but can be exchanged (for example Dollar) to be used outside the community. The only difficulty I see is to make the community accept this trusting currency that it can be exchanged per dollar at any time or when necessary.

The exit that I see is the government to back the emission of Asgardian currency with ballast in dollar, euro or pound. Thus the population could buy "Asgardian currency" (yet unnamed) directly in the ministry of finance and vice versa.

To enable the operation the credit cards could be used to buy still unnamed Asgardian currency and / or exchange for the currency backed up.

Evidently if I buy the currency and then want to sell it back I lose a little of its value, the exchange margin. The government sets the buying and selling prices and the changes can be free among the Asgardians who want to work in the financial market.

The wheel has already been invented. The era of inflationary fiat currencies is passing The banks will die. BTC and ETH should be used as money in the planetary economy.

Asgardia, at this moment, is a movement. In order to incorporate like a state, there needs to be an entity in space. Even a small space settlement would cost billions of dollars, or about tens of thousands of dollars per Asgardian. In order to bootstrap to orbit, we need a profitable business in space. It might be interesting to start a digital free haven, a place free of censorship. To build and launch a satellite-based webserver in geosynchrous orbit will take much  less, i.e a few millions.

@Germen Roding
It was my thought too: we'll have to commerce in "something" other nations' people want to buy.
As "moving goods to space" may have far prohibitive costs (I mean: who likes to pay, let's say, 1.000 euros or dollars to move an apple to the "space base" we even don't have?) we'll have to commerce in services, digital ones. Thus the idea of "digital free heaven", even if it's kind of dangerous business, it can be remunerative at a fair cost of exercise.

Other, more physical, goods may be placed into the marketplace to be bought, but produced directly on Earth (that's trivial enough).
I'm not that sure a (traditional) "server rack" can be placed into orbit at affordable costs: storage, at the moment, still needs hard disks. Even if it can be calculated the difference, in costs, to send up there SSDs: maybe the fact we'll have to pay to lift an hard disk compensate the relative high cost per megabyte of an SSD which may result less expensive to send, in terms of cost-per-megabyte/cost-to-lift.
The fact the storage have to be physically out of Earth is due to the fact Earth's laws may prevent some kind of uses we'll may prefer.
On the other side, depending on the kind of satellite we'll place into orbit, chances are we'll have no energy and cooling costs. ;-)

Last but not least, being a State we should have an internal currency: that currency should be exchangeable with other Earth's ones (with the exchange rate established by Asgardia National Bank) and used into Asgardia only or with the ones will like to accept it in payment.

@Dirk Baeyens
We can't run such business on Earth: what if "Asgardia.net" (the cloud) runs something is illegal into your country and, awakening in the morning, you'll find the police at your door, asking you to give 'em your hard disks?
Things which are illegal on Earth (maybe into some countries only) may not be the same into space, the same as "offshore" heavens, with the difference it could be harder to break a business based into space than on Earth (look what happened to gnutella and other similar cases).
That just to say, but we're not forced to do something "illegal-on-Earth", obviously. ;-)

Perhaps we could adopt a crypto-currency?  I'd suggest Ethereum but there are many others out there!  

I'm suggesting it because Ethereum lends itself to development with others(generating income), plus we could implement our own currency within Ethereum -

"Design and issue your own cryptocurrency

Create a tradeable digital token that can be used as a currency, a representation of an asset, a virtual share, a proof of membership or anything at all. These tokens use a standard coin API, so your contract will be automatically compatible with any wallet, other contract or exchange also using this standard. 

The total amount of tokens in circulation can be set to a simple fixed amount or fluctuate based on any programmed ruleset."

Using Ethereum(or another crypto-currency) we could get the basics of a working economy sorted.  I'm not an economist(this is probably clear, lol) or a crypto expert but in my mind I see using a crypto-currency as very "Asgardian"

https://www.ethereum.org/

@atledenin
The problem with a cryptocurrency, as far as I know (but I'm re-reading the whole process) is that we, as a State, will need to have business to other States, not just on a people-to-people basis so, what if they'll grey-list us as we'll be in danged, 'cause of our currency, to be used for money laundering?

1) We can not use any existing official currency as we will not have influence on it - I mean if we use USD of Bitcoin we can not emit it. I am not sure about legal aspects for declaring some currency say in US but in RF it is illegal. What we can make is a kind of Mesuring Unit, call it any way you like(we can not officially say that it is currency) and for a legal base we can use corporate law for obligations(in fact there is no limit for emiting obligations). So as far as asgardia is not an officially recognised country by any Earth states we can call ourself a comunity and use corporate law.

2) We can emit obligations in any amount but they worth nothing till we have some real comodities to secure them. To secure the obligations we need goods or their equivalents (amounts of currency of official states). There several ideas how to raise funds. 

a) First of course make a tax(say any citisen shall pay 1USD per month) for use of Asgardia web service. 

b) Make a search engine, well add google search engine to Asgardian site and ask Asgardians to use it, 200 000 searchers for months will bring not much but some advertising fund(say 1-2 000 usd per month) - not much but cost nothing neither for the state nore for citizens.

c) Make an internet shop where asgardians will buy what they want(and recommend to asgardian to use it) - well for the asgardians may be at first there would be no much profit but is can bring some chash to the state due to added value. Possibly at first we can not make a golbal Internet shop, but we can make profit from referial programs of other shops promoting their goods in our shop and gradually making agreements replace these third party goods for the goods we sell.

d) Having clear what asgardians buy in the I-shop we can start organising production chains for that goods trying to bring as much automation to it as possible. Say asgardians buy 20000 mobiles per month - so we can arrange an assembly line for phones knowing that we have the demand for them - than buy or construct production of some components that are less technoligical. 

e) At some extent when Asgardia will have some profit funds and so to say some state companies it can start to emit obligations in which it will be able to pay salaries and that can be exchanged for currency.
This is how I see it in brief. Sorry for mistakes English is not my native language.

I am sure that once we have habitations off planet, we can start a tourism campaign and possibly vacation packages. I personally intend to file a business license for a vacation spa/resort. As for tangible exports from Asgardia, I am sure that there is some money to be made in scientific discoveries, as Asgardia patents and protects the hopefully many and great scientific breakthroughs. We also may establish schools and universities and charge admission at a higher rate for non-citizens. 

Here's a start, start businesses with direct Asgardian links. Then, use these businesses, for example, affordable modular and modern housing/living quarters, technologies required for space orbit habitation to be sustainable, such as vertical farming in Urban or space restrictive  environments, as well as recreational businesses, like fashion for Asgardia citizens, or clothing inspired by Asgardia. 

yeah i have few ideas to generate revenue for asgardia......

1) we can start our own publication house on asgardia name to write novels etc ..... 2) apart from selling merchandising we can create our own handicraft house which we make unique staff........

regards

kashif shaikh

This is my suggestion to establish a dynamic economy:

Firstly, you need a virtual bank and a virtual store. Then a bank account is created for each Asgardia through the bank, and within it there is an equalization value of, for example, one million units per person, and the total amount of money is also determined. Anyone can create and sell a product for a virtual store on their own initiative. To benefit from the bank and the market, the bank can deduct and save part of the sales transaction as a tax, and use one million of them each for recruitment and retain part of it for supply on international markets. A different percentage of taxes can be considered for different income levels. All financial transactions must be transparent and observable for all members of the Asgardia to prevent rents and corruption. But everyone will be free to spend their money on the store as they see fit.

Here are a few things to happen:

First, the number of early inhabitants of Asgardia remains constant and the economy is expanding with two factors of efficiency and economic profitability.

Secondly, the importance of people dependent on production should be. As more productive and creative people produce more marketable products and gain more profits, they will have more value in Asgardia's decision making.

Third, equal status will be created in front of residents to grow in a free competition. Since the initial amount of Asgardia's money is fixed with this method, it will result in an increase in the value of money and will be able to supply it in foreign markets. But there must be a law on how and how much of the international supply comes from scientific research.

People who have the science, product, and creative thought that can create value from nothing, will be more influential by pooling their value for themselves.

In my opinion, the task of assigning a new colony to the economy, in its methods of production, will restrict it. We have to let the inhabitants of Asgardia decide what to produce and how to grow and develop Asgardia.

This is a method of political economy that directly links value to efficiency.

The next step is entering the world of inter-Planet business. Investing in resource discovery projects in other areas that start with accurate resource mapping, the creation of the space transportation insurance industry, the sale of resource information in the free market and the provision of capital to extract resources through robots and sell them. And in the next step, physical entry into the realm of space.

Hi Partenon62,

I have an idea more or less like yours! Here is my post on the petition for Universal Basic Income(https://asgardia.space/en/petitions/10607-implement-universal-basic-income/):

Tax collection is not the only way to finance Universal Basic Income. One way I believe UBI can be started is through Helicopter Money (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helicopter_money) or quantitative easing for people (http://positivemoney.org/), and with that, a functional economy would be created.

How do I see this working:

Step 1 - Whenever a person becomes a citizen of Asgardia, 1000 SOLARS would be created out of nothing and this new money would be given to this new citizen.

Step 2 - To encourage consumption, a law would be created something like this: a citizen could only save 40% of what he/she earned when he/she became a citizen. The other 60% the citizen would have to spend as he/she liked within a year within 10 different products or services, otherwise, the government would take what exceeded 40% and was not spent.

Step 3 - Because of the law created in Step 2, other citizens who believe in Asgardia and want more SOLARS money would be encouraged to create business. These businesses would initially be digital products or services (ebooks, online courses, translations, programming etc.) and then tangible things (clothes with the symbol of Asgardia, toys and even food). To encourage entrepreneurship, these businesses would have no taxes.

With these 3 steps, I believe a functional economy would be created in a short span of time. Is still necessary to discuss how to avoid fraud (someone could try to become a citizen several times), but I believe that with a little research this can be solved. Web of trust (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_of_trust) is an example.

In my opinion, Universal Basic Income can create a functional economy

Hi cardoso,

Your method is very clever, but it does not lead to an economy, although it leads to commerce. The central government of Asgardia needs sustained revenues and incomes to invest in infrastructure projects. Unplanned and compulsory spending will only lead to bubble banking and speculation, which will result in inflation and the depreciation of "Solar."