#warholsbot A bot for Telegram that facilitates transactions for an experimental art currency called Warhols.

In the current version people can get and spend Warhols in three different ways: Creative Economy, Gift Economy and Speculation Economy.

The Creative Economy is organized around discovering content of several types created by other users, and also adding and promoting your content to the economy. Most people are familiar with this model, since it’s similar to how online publishing and social media works nowadays.

Then there is the Speculation Economy. This one is about taking risks, and having the promise of great rewards. For the brave thrill seekers, we created a stock exchange market, where you can invest in different “flavors” of Warhols. There is also a cultural market of sorts, playing on the theme of fame and obscurity.

Finaly there is the Gift Economy. We use the gift economy in our lives pretty much everyday, but it’s almost by definition not associated with money. To draw attention to this amazing way of exchanging things between one another, we created a way to stimulate the gifting. Pay forward for your Warhols with acts or kindness, or put them into the Warhols Fountain, where they are multiplied until they overflow into everyone’s account.

Previously the project was being developed using PHP and MySQL, and had only the Creative Economy function. In order to simplify the implementation we are rebuilding the project using Node.js to interface with Telegram. We will continue to use the same MySQL database.