Section 5: What you can do with Open Money — use cases, memecoins, and more

Open Money isn’t just a concept — it’s a toolkit. Here are some real-world use cases like borderless payments, memecoins as meta ads, NFTs as login, and how money becomes identity in the network age.

So far we’ve covered the basics of an Open Money framework. We’ve talked about why we need Open Money, and we’ve even explored what some of the key components of an Open Money system look like.

What we haven’t spent much time on — at least not yet — is what you can do with Open Money. Or, more specifically, what becomes possible because of the unique properties of Open Money.

This section will change that. We’re going to dive into:

How Open Money is borderless money
Open Money isn’t just faster or cheaper — it’s fundamentally more portable. In the same way that the internet made information global by default, Open Money makes value global by default. No intermediaries, no wire delays, no banking hours. Just networks. Whether you're in Nairobi, New York, or a DAO Discord, Open Money travels at the speed of the network, not the speed of old institutions.
How a dollar is different than USDC
A dollar in your pocket and a dollar-denominated stablecoin like USDC might sound the same — but under the hood, they behave very differently. Open Money lets us reimagine the dollar as programmable, composable, and accessible. It’s no longer just a unit of account; it’s a building block. A dollar wrapped in code becomes more than money — it becomes infrastructure.
How memecoins are the new meta ads
Memecoins might seem like a joke at first glance — but they’re doing something traditional ads can’t. They capture attention and store it as financial value. In a world where the scarcest resource is attention, memecoins are programmable media objects that let people participate in — and profit from — viral narratives.
How NFTs will replace email authentication
Open Money also enables new ways of proving identity, ownership, and access. Instead of giving your email to sign up, what if you connected a wallet that holds an NFT membership? NFTs become lightweight passports into communities, content, and experiences — no inbox spam, no logins, just presence and proof.
How new kinds of money are really new forms of identity
When you hold a memecoin, an NFT, or a stablecoin onchain, you're not just holding value — you’re signaling who you are, what you care about, and where you belong. Open Money turns wallets into mirrors: expressions of identity, belief, and affiliation. Money becomes biography.
How money is network
At its core, Open Money reveals a deeper truth: money is just a protocol for coordination. It’s not the paper or the coin or the app — it’s the network of trust, exchange, and meaning behind it. And now, for the first time, those networks are open by design. This is the heart of Open Money.

And more. The idea is that by the end of this section we’ll have a better handle on how people use Open Money — and why some of its use cases feel like entirely new categories. Because they are.

This post is part of the Open Money Project, an ongoing series that forms the basis of a longer work. Subscribe to get a weekly update as it unfolds.