Foundations

Beginnings

It started with Real Oviedo, S.A.D., a cooperative football club rebuilt through the commitment of its supporters. Around the same time, we helped promote Co-opoly: The Game of Cooperatives, a board game that teaches how shared decisions and shared risks can create stability.

Those early experiences showed that cooperation only works when it has structure—organized trust, clear process, accountable design. They became the groundwork for what would later evolve into The Co-operative Exchange.

Building the Framework

From that foundation came a series of practical projects: The Co-operative Knowledgebase, The Co-operative Register, and The New Co-operator.

Each filled a gap—documentation, verification, or education—and together they outlined a framework for cooperative identity and exchange. The goal was simple: make cooperation operational, not theoretical.

The Turn to Lightning

When the Bitcoin Lightning Network matured, it felt familiar. Its principles—direct exchange, shared verification, no gatekeepers—echoed what cooperatives had practiced for generations.

That connection led to a new phase of work linking the cooperative economy to Lightning. BuyCoop, CoopPay Global, and IXIOX now extend the same cooperative logic into open digital systems: commerce, payments, and governance.

Today

The structure continues to evolve through CoopShop, Co-op Café, and The Workers Cellar—physical spaces for testing, packaging, and fulfillment.

What began as advocacy has become a functioning network: real products, instant payments, and verifiable results.

Heritage and Inspiration

Our perspective was shaped by long involvement in the cooperative movement.

Over the years, we’ve been members of, worked with, or provided legal counsel to cooperatives in the Philippines and abroad, including:

  • The Co-operative Group (UK, 1863)

  • Co-operative Press Limited (UK, 1873)

  • Recreational Equipment Inc. (USA, 1938)

  • Mountain Equipment Co-operative (Canada, 1971)

  • 1 Cooperative Insurance System of the Philippines (1974)

  • Cooperative Health Management Federation (2014)

  • First Community Cooperative (1952)

  • ACDI Multipurpose Cooperative (1981)

  • Sorosoro Ibaba Development Cooperative (1969)

  • Philippine Cooperative Center (1995)

These institutions remind us that the cooperative economy has been peer-to-peer from the start—moving value long before Lightning existed.

Looking Forward

Our work continues one verified transaction and one cooperative at a time. The tools will change; the principle will not—cooperation that works.

 

Trademark Information: The use of the name CoopPay in CoopPay Global is under permission from One Cooperative Technology Service, the first technology service cooperative federation in the Philippines. CoopPay Global operates independently and does not imply diminution of any trademark right(s). Lightning is an open protocol, and the initiative is not limited to the use of CoopPay or any specific implementation.