History  

 In the fall of 2007, a group of about twenty New Hampshire residents got together to see what they could do to promote the use of silver as a trade medium. They set a meeting in November, expecting to come together to really ramp up the promotion of the Liberty Dollar. Unfortunately, the government decided to raid them just a few days before the meeting.

The meeting tone and agenda was quickly changed to "what do we do now?" Some analysis and discussion focused on two flaws in the Liberty Dollar model that the group saw:

1. The U.S. Dollar denomination
2. The centralized production and distribution system

The dollar denomination, while creating a strong incentive for using the LD in trade, also tied it too strongly to the government. Most people were also unsatisfied with the sometimes large difference between the spot price of the metal and the face value.

The centralized system, though, most everyone agreed was the biggest weakness. It gave the government an easy target to strike. It didn't take long to realize that a more distributed system would be at least a partial safeguard against robbery. It was also brought up that there is no real reason why money can't be produced by laymen.

This meeting resulted in a plan to design and manufacture a die set that could be sold or leased cheaply to anyone; who could then use the dies to produce their own silver pieces. A design contest was held, and eventually a design was selected. Concurrently, research into cheap techniques and processes for stamping the pieces resulted in a prototype die set as well as professional estimates for producing quality die sets.

While the prototype die set proved that a cheap stamping setup could work, the estimates for production of die sets were higher than expected. The realization that a cheap way to distribute production was not as likely as expected initially slowed down progress on the project, but it also ignited the flames of inspiration.