barter is often confused with systems such as community currency. The difference is that barter involves only goods and services. Barter is an ancient method of exchanging goods and/or services without using currency. In recent centuries, barter has been primarily practiced at the retail level between individuals and/or small companies. Barter used to be terribly inefficient due to the need to divide larger assets (cows for example), however not any longer. Gold based systems are hard to inflate, but also don’t allow monetary expansion to help offset recessions.