Our Story
It All Started Here


Way back in 2009, the singer Bono of U2 put out a challenge over YouTube for people to describe how we could address poverty. Our response to that video is below. But let’s go back a bit further, to the original plan, starting as a concept in 2003, and written down in 2006.
The following was our plan for the Peace Portal charity, and its strategic business partners in the Free Digital Universe concept; ShareMyBiz, ePayCafe, Free Digital Market, etc…. This concept is now, finally, truly launched, as the SPADES Community and Cause-Based Token in 2021 (what a long strange trip it’s been!).
We feel this history is important to document because it also includes one of the very first Defi architecture examples, the ePayCafe, which was a portion of the overall system shown below. The original plan is shared, so you know where we came from, and the path to creating the SPADES Community now implemented here.
You can find the following documents, and their historical dates online, by Googling “ePayCafe” (our pre cryptocurrencies concept for Defi), the links are listed at the bottom of the first page of a Google search. The search results show up as “ShareMyBiz”, and “Project Peace Portal.”
The first shared document is Project Peace Portal and is located online here.
We have included it in a PDF viewer, it takes a moment or two to load. If it is extra slow please refresh the page and it should show up.
Of course, for charities to be funded there has to be a profit center based on the regular commercial marketplace. Peace Portal was to be supported by ShareMyBiz, ePayCafe, and other partnered commercial businesses explained in the Executive Summary found online here.
It is a very interesting, short, read. It shows how for-profit and non-profits can work together to improve the world. This is a critical model that more businesses should adopt today if we are going to sustainably meet our global economic, environmental, and social challenges.
It is this model upon which the SPADES Community and cause-based Token are based.
Remember, when this was written, Bitcoin had not even been invented yet. Defi had no meaning, there was no such thing as blockchain cryptocurrency. We had to wait for that to evolve for this to become a reality.
Today, it will be the excess proceeds, beyond liquidity reserves, of SPADES Token sales on exchanges that will provide the funding. The system itself is designed to help individuals. The SPADES Token was created by SCOPE, a private charitable organization chartered to be of assistance to people, and peace-building groups, so that together we can make a sustainable transition to the Information Age.
As you can see from the above documents, the Directors of SCOPE (Spades Charitable Oversight & Protective Executors) have been working on addressing how to best leverage new technologies to improve our world, and they responded to the Bono challenge in the video that follows.
Please do forgive the unprofessional quality, it is just a screen share with a bad microphone done late at night (I was exhausted, well some things never change).
One of the most important aspects of the Free Digital Universe, and Peace Portal, in the overall system, was the ePayCafe. The site was created using a lot of “Flash”, which is no longer supported so unfortunately you can’t see those parts. However, the most important parts still show up and can be seen on the Internet Archive here. Trading (now called swapping) of digital currencies, escrow (Proof of Stake), brokers, sales, and anonymity (Defi). This is not hyperbole, look at the record on the internet archive. We still own the ww.epaycafe.com website (currently parked), but will eventually launch an exchange there to be integrated with the SPADES Community.
The projects being worked on in the 2000’s, Peace Portal, ShareMyBiz, ePayCafe, and Free Digital Universe turned out to be more than we could chew with the tech available at the time, but we didn’t give up. Today with our own SPADES crypto Token, and the communities non-crypto barter-based Cloud Credit system, this decade old idea can now come to practical fruition.


Thanks to the Internet Archive “Way Back Machine” you can still visit Peace Portal here and Free Digital Universe here; unfortunately, again FLASH is no longer supported so you can’t see some graphics.
What is truly amazing, is that those projects attempted to integrate things that were relatively new ideas in 2007 but are today common place; a private global digital currency that was decentralized (but not on a blockchain), paying people for selling off their digital products (think NFTs), a social networking page like FB (then MySpace), rewards programs, and affiliate marketing designs so that every single person could earn in to the ecosystem even if they didn’t have a product of their own. It is all integrated in to the SPADES Community.
The project was designed as a charitable and commercial platform that supported individuals while extracting a bit out of each profit center to fund the Peace Portal cause projects like One Laptop Per Child, Water.org, and the SCALE(Social Cooperative and Local Exchange) program. The overall objectives was summed up in this graphic.


The need to address social, economic, and environmental issues is today even more pressing than it was in 2007. SCOPE created the SPADES Token to be a means for helping to fund these sorts of projects and to provide a private oversight organization dedicated to most efficiently meeting the goals.
Information Age tools can relieve pressure on people and the environment. Achieving this will require a common global community where even the poor can create digital wealth where value is created from human elements of creativity (music, words, art, marketing) rather than by exploitation of natural resources.
An environmental and economic system is needed where one can shoot a lion video instead of shooting a lion, and still provide wealth for their family earned by digital sales and licensing.
It is our intention to support developing world users in conjunction with the charities our platform supports. Our first ACCESS POINT project is scheduled to open in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo, in 2022.
All the Founding Members of the Spades Token Project, and the managing entity SCOPE, have been working for years in a variety of ways to better the conditions in which we live.
Age changes are not easy, when humanity transitioned from the Agricultural Age to the Industrial Age we first experienced a “Dark Age”, but once we figured it out a Renaissance period followed.
The same is true today, as we move from the Industrial Age to the Information Age, we may experience some anxiety (especially older folks), but in the end we can come out the better for it.
If we come to realize that ages are defined by their economic models, then the advent of digital currencies can be properly directed to address some of our most pressing issues.
The hunter and gatherer age used barter as an economic model, the agricultural age gold and silver, the industrial age fiat currencies controlled by governments, and now in the information age, we have Defi and cryptocurrencies that are shifting power to the individual. Please, don’t be left behind, we are here to help everyone (who will listen & participate) through this transition.
This is a monumental change that few have truly grasped the significance of yet. Soon enough, you may need to use a retailers own coin to purchase from that retailer. This is the natural evolution of currencies.
Instead of currency being localized, with people having minimal if any choice in what currency they use (not to mention how inflation is contrlled by the currencies controlling body), in the Information Age people of like mind, value, and culture can exchange with their own chosen “community” currency, and they will.
Community currencies allow for circulation in that community’s economy, and if done correctly it will increase the shared wealth among the community members.
Cryptocurrencies can (and in some cases are) being utilized as community currencies. We have been preparing for this for over 15 years, and the SPADES Community was created as a non-profit simply to help humanity through this transition.
What purpose any coin or token was minted for, and what happens with the proceeds from the release of the coins/tokens defines the purpose of that currency. Our purpose is to subsidize this platform, it would go broke otherwise, as we don’t mine or sell your data. We exist only to serve the needs of people experiencing the greatest shift in history. When profits are made from Token sales on exchanges, or through our site, the proceeds go to the non-profit (SCOPE) that created this site, not individuals.
We invite you to participate in our SPADES community and hope you will choose to join the cause. We will do our best to develop community applications, programs for wealth building, and specific projects to allow greater access to those in the developing world so that they can lift themselves out of poverty.
You give a person not a fish, but a fishing pole, if you truly want to provide them with a dignified way to live a more prosperous life.
Thank you for your time in reading this, we will provide you with a few links below for those who want to peruse a bit more of the history; and here is one last video, asking you to consider the transition to the Information Age.
PLEASE NOTE, WE MADE THE ABOVE VIDEO IN 2009
Here are some other links to our previous projects work:
Peace Day TV Broadcasts
From 2010 through 2014 we did yearly PeaceDay TV broadcasts on September 21st (The International Day of Peace) with the United Nations support organizations, individuals, and non-profits from around the globe. SPADES and SCOPE are planning on more broadcasts with our friends at The Peace Channel.
Visit the Peace Portal Podcasts.
Free Digital Universe
Quick look at the Free Digital Universe concept here via the Internet Archive.
Peace Day Radio
Archived Radio interviews with peace builders, & participants of the Peace Day Global Broadcast including water.org, Culture of Peace Initiative, Playing Foe Change, PeaceJam, Alliance for Peace Building and over 100 more. Information on our own Information Age concepts are available at Peace Day Radio (an adjunct to the Peace Portal Podcasts)
Acknowledgement
Some people listed in the Peace Portal and ShareMyBiz documents above (and some not listed), who contributed towards building this concept, are no longer with us. They fully recognized that we are in the process of an Age Change, and that such changes are not easy. We thank them, and appreciate their efforts.
Robert Spiotta, Eric Evans, and Johnnie West, have now passed away, but their contribution is remembered by those of us who persist.