Your Ripple Coin Effect

Coin 00347 · still moving · +6,910 mi

One coffee in Atlanta.
Nine acts. Three continents.

You’ll hold it for about a week. Long enough to do something kind for a stranger, write the one line that says what you did, and put the coin in their hand. It is theirs to pass on after that — and everywhere it turns up next, you hear about it.

Struck in antique brass. Arrives in a capsule, not a jiffy bag.

The Your Ripple Coin Effect: the world in relief, with Giving, Love, Kindness, Charity around the rim and Pay it Forward beneath it

Why one coin is not one act

You get credit for kindness you never witnessed.

It keeps going without you. Every hand it reaches is one ring further out — people who will never know your name, doing things you read about on a Tuesday afternoon.

9Acts so far

Each one written by the person who did it, in their own words.

3Rings out

Ring one is who you handed it to. Ring three has never heard of you.

2Coins it started

Two people who were handed this coin went and bought their own.

Coin 00347 · the record so far

Nobody wrote this for the website.

  1. Atlanta, US · 2 March

    Covered the coffee for the man behind me. He tried to give me the money.

  2. Nashville, US · 19 March

    Sat with a woman at the Greyhound station who was having a very bad night.

  3. Lisbon, PT · 28 April

    Carried a pram down three flights. She had two bags and a toddler and no hands left.

  4. Tokyo, JP · 4 July

    Left flowers and the coin with a note for the night-shift nurse.

Read all nine →

Route drawn from the coin’s own record. Globe imagery: NASA Visible Earth, Blue Marble.

The obvious objection

“Strangers won’t bother.”

They already do, in their millions, for less reason than this. People have been passing tracked objects around the world for twenty-five years — and those objects never asked anybody to do something kind first.

Where’s GeorgeDollar bills, stamped and tracked since 1998
Millions tracked
BookCrossingBooks released into the wild with a tracking ID
132 countries
This coinAdds the reason for the pass
A kindness

Where the first act happens

At a counter, when you pay for the person behind you.

That is the moment the coin was made for. It is also why you will find these in independent coffee shops rather than on a warehouse shelf — the barista hands you one and explains it in a sentence.

Stock coins at your shop →

“The one behind you is covered. Here — this is what did it. Do the same for somebody and pass it on.”

What the barista says

Before you ask

A public ledger, deliberately imprecise.

Places, not addresses

We record a precise location to check a handoff really happened in person, and publish only the neighbourhood. Never the doorway you stood in.

Names, not identities

A first name and a last initial. Sign in with Apple and we never receive your email address at all.

140 characters

No photos, no comments, no profiles. One line about what you did, and nothing else to mine.

Read the privacy policy → It is specific, and it is short.

Start one

A dozen is a room full of chains.

One coin starts one chain. A dozen is enough to hand one to everybody in a room and watch them scatter in twelve directions.