BUNZ Community App

BUNZ: A Local Community Barter App

Community is what brings us together in electronic communications and applications and BUNZ is like that, but with a slight twist.  It's not about the money, it's about the community.

Community-centric Tool

There are many applications and sites available to us today, such as Craigslist, Nextdoor, LetGo, OfferUp, etc, but most of these centralize on one aspect from buying and selling to the sharing-economy.  But none of these applications focus on barter or trade in the local community as the core feature.  While it is certainly possible to use these apps to barter most likely the interaction will involve a fiat currency.

Background

BUNZ did start out about 6 years ago (c. 2013) as a private group on Facebook barter community. It grew in popularity in its home-town of Toronto, Ontario, Canada, so much that the founders of BUNZ decided to move outside of Facebook to their own website and app. This allowed that the world could re-discover and appreciate the ancient tradition of barter.  BUNZ makes trading items much easier now, so that rather than dealing with the local marketplace and it's financial woes, one can feel at home with a community.

New Feature: BTZ

While BUNZ began as a local community barter app, it has grown to include a currency, where the founders of BUNZ realized that sometimes it was impossible to trade a physical object for a service or vise versa.  Throughout time humans have tried to figure out how exchange goods and services for a fair price.  Usually this involves haggling, but lately prices have been more hard to negotiate.

In using the BTZ crypto-currency, BUNZ has been able to add value to the items that are given for trade, but stay outside of the fiat currencies of its own nation as well as others.

How does it work? 

Joining the BUNZ community is simple enough, anyone can find the site or app.  Joining can be done by visiting the website or downloading the app.  After that the app and site are fairly similar to other aforementioned services like Craigslist, LetGo, or OfferUp.  There is a section to view local posts, a section to create local posts, and a section to invite more friends to the service.

Of course the latest feature in the app, the BTZ cryptocurrency is being promoted at the moment because it is so new to the app, but the feature is a side note to the actual function of the app.  BUNZ is primarily a barter app. and although we may all agree that we barter in a sense for the money that we carry to pay for certain things; it is merely a social construct, a means to an end. 

Barter where Cash is King

As more people join, the value of the app improves, but this value isn't monetary, it's functional.  Our modern society seems to find more value in experiences than in things.  While a photo of one and one's friends atop Aconcagua may speak to thousands of the heroism and challenge, the experience of doing it cannot be captured in a single shot. Transactions in our society have lost their community and meaning. People try to find themselves in things rather than experiences and community.  BUNZ brings this back to us, recapturing the lost element of community in our lives.


Check out BUNZ on both the Google Play and Apple App stores for free now.