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Last weekend Montreal blogger Kyle MacDonald threw a party to celebrate the fact that he got his new Saskatchewan home in exchange for a red paper clip. Starting a year ago, MacDonald bartered the clip for increasingly valuable stuff, including a camp stove and free rent in a Phoenix flat. Having announced his aim (the house) in advance, MacDonald likely got a boost from techies eager to see the Internet pass this audacious test of its networking power. “My whole motto was ‘Start small, think big, and have fun,’” says MacDonald, 26, “I really kept my effort on the creative side rather than the business side.”

Yet as odd as the MacDonald swap was, barter is now big business on the Net. This year more than 400,000 companies worldwide will swap some $10 billion worth of goods and services on a growing number of barter sites. These websites allow companies to trade products for a virtual currency, which they can use to buy goods from other members. In Iceland, garment-maker Kapusalan sells a third of its output on the booming Vidskiptanetid exchange, earning virtual “exchange kronur” that it uses to buy machinery and pay part of employee salaries. The Troc-Services exchange in France offers more than 4,600 services, from algebra to ironing.

This is not your caveman’s barter system. By creating currencies, the Net razes a major barrier—what Bob Meyer, publisher of BarterNews, calls “the double coincidence of wants”. That is, two parties once not only had to find each other, but also a swap of goods that both desired. Now, they can price the deal in virtual currency. Even so, when Brazilian Jose Rivaro tells people he is CEO of Tradaq, a barter exchange in Sao Paulo, he still gets comments like, “We’re going back to the Stone Age?”

Barter also helps firms make use of idle capacity. Advertising, for example, is “hugely bartered” because many media can supply new ad space at little cost. Moreover, Internet ads don’t register in industry-growth stats because many swaps are arranged outside formal exchanges.

Like eBay, most barter sites allow members to “grade” trading partners for honesty, quality and so on. Barter exchanges can allow firms in countries with hyperinflation or nontradable currencies to enter global trades. Next year, a nonprofit exchange called Quick Lift Two (QL2) plans to open in Nairobi, offering barter deals to 38,000 Kenyan farmers in remote locales. Two small planes will deliver the goods. QL2 director Gacii Waciuma says the farmers are excited to be “liberated from corrupt middlemen.” For them, barter evokes a bright future, not a precapitalist past. (BENJAMIN SUTHERLAND)

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