Bio
Andreas Arnold is an industrial engineer, social entrepreneur, and expert in cooperative business models and finance. He serves on the board of Platform Coops eG and has long supported founders, startups, and organizations developing social innovations and cooperative platform models. He previously led the digital transformation and marketplace development of the freelancer cooperative SMartDe eG, coordinated the marketplace strategy for the blockchain-based UBI project Circles, and advised its partner organization, Circles Coop eG. To help shape the cooperative digital economy in Germany and Europe, Andreas is actively engaged in Web3, particularly blockchain technology and Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAOs) and Decentralised Finance (DeFi). Most recently, he has been developing a marketplace and euro-backed complementary currency (Makowi) to increase the visibility of cooperatives and social enterprises, enable economic exchange and access to finance, and bridge the cooperative economy and Web3.