Mark Boyle

As of 4 October 2012, the official website, www.justfortheloveofit.org, claimed "There are now 42425 members in 168 countries sharing 519515 skills, 106784 tools and 660 spaces" on the Freeconomy Community site. It shares similarities with websites such as The Freecycle Network, Freegle and Streetbank. The Freeconomy Community allows people to share, moving away from exchange economies towards a pay it forward philosophy.

Boyle is currently working with others to set up the UK's first land-based Freeconomic community. Other founding members include Shaun Chamberlin, author of The Transition Timeline (2009), and Fergus Drennan, also known as the BBC's 'Roadkill Chef'.

Later in the same year, Boyle developed an alternative plan: to live without money entirely. After some preparatory purchases (including a solar panel and wood-burning stove), he began his first year of "moneyless living" on Buy Nothing Day 2008.

During his first six years in Britain, Boyle lived in Bristol and managed two organic food companies. In 2007, after a conversation with a friend during which they decided "money... creates a kind of disconnection between us and our actions", Boyle set up the Freeconomy Community.

Boyle has been the primary author of the Freeconomy Blog since it was launched in 2007. Guest writers have recently included fellow moneyless people Heidemarie Schwermer, Daniel Suelo and Tomi Astikainen.

Mark Boyle grew up in Ballyshannon, County Donegal, in Ulster. He took a degree in Business at the Galway-Mayo Institute of Technology, before moving to Britain in 2002.

Mark Boyle (born 8 May 1979), also known as The Moneyless Man, is an Irish activist and writer best known for founding the online Freeconomy Community, and for living without money since November 2008. Boyle writes regularly for the Freeconomy Blog and British newspaper The Guardian. His first book, The Moneyless Man: A Year of Freeconomic Living, was published in 2010. Boyle lives near Loughrea, in the west of Ireland.

A few months after creating the Freeconomy Community, Boyle set out on a two-and-a-half-year trek from Bristol to Porbandar in India, the birthplace of Gandhi. Inspired by the nonviolent salt march led in India by Gandhi in 1930, and by the woman in America known as Peace Pilgrim, he set off in January 2008, carrying no money and only a small number of possessions. However, he was forced to turn back only a month into the trip, as language barriers and difficulties in persuading people he would work for food and a place to stay halted his journey shortly after he arrived in Calais. One of his travelling companions had travellers cheques for emergencies, which allowed them to travel back to the UK. He had not planned the trip, believing it was best to let fate take its course.