Blockchain could even guide the world into an era where no one needs charitable donations
The cryptocurrency market is often preoccupied with discussions about market slumps, the volatility of the market, and the regulations of the industry. These conversations are not to be ignored entirely as they are still important but we must also ask, do people really understand how blockchain technology works to reinvent the ways we work, think or talk?
Blockchain can impact the way that we identify things and the way that we interact and with the digital world. It has the potential to create a more transparent and fair society.
While some are focused on all these speculations and regulations, others are considering how blockchain can impact humanity as a whole. Platforms like Giveth, use decentralised giving to ensure that donations reach the right hands. Some 800 cases of charity fraud were reported in the UK in 2016, a figure that police say is just a fraction of the overall crimes, while the Red Cross has also been criticised for its lack of transparency. A platform like Giveth could give donors more confidence.
Blockchain could even guide the world into an era where no one needs charitable donations. More than three billion people (almost half of the world’s population) live on less than $2.50 a day and 1.3 billion live in extreme poverty (less than $1.25 a day), but could platforms like Mannabase, which aims to provide a universal basic income (UBI) to anyone who signs up through their native cryptocurrency, be a solution? NuMundo is a platform that will serve eco-villages that do not have access to capital and provide a range of options for members to find memorable and transformational experiences; it’s being pitched as a way to help the world’s poorest population rise out of poverty.
On an even larger scale, blockchain could even positively impact those who are not living in poverty, but long for a way of life where they aren’t working themselves to the bone to make ends meet. NativeToken is a platform that helps communities to set up their own local tokens and operate an independent economy, all while being plugged in to a global liquidity network. It enables functional decentralised communities known as Tribes, to generate their own token, raise capital and support projects they care about, thus allowing them to retool their world in a way that works for them.
Also read: 3 ways blockchain platforms can make significant economic and social impact in Asia
We can also look to blockchain-based companies to help us reach the goal of a more sustainable Earth. LUXCHAIN offers Decentralized Verification Solutions – solutions that empower personal luxury goods industry. The team is rapidly establishing itself as the standard for the verification and authentication of the entire second-hand luxury goods market; a market that has reached a worth of $3 Trillion Dollars in the last 20 years. The company behind LUXCHAIN has already developed the world’s first global luxury price index powered by artificial intelligence (AI), with the aim of extending the lifecycle of personal luxury products.
By establishing a price index that allows them to track how much their items are worth, people will be less inclined to allow these products to gather dust in the closet and will sell them on the second-hand market. On the one hand, such a solution can help to decrease the fashion and luxury 10% contribution to the world’s carbon emissions contribution. But on the other, creating a system for digital assets allows people to get the maximum worth for their goods and allows buyers to verify that they are purchasing a legitimate product, with secure transfer of asset ownership to go along with it.
More and more people are expected to buy and sell goods online (the global ecommerce market was worth $1.915 trillion in 2016) making a system for digital assets even more important. And it’s not just for luxury products, this could benefit the sustainability of any industry that involves the sale and purchase of any item.
Thus, there is need to remove focus from the short-term speculations in the Crypto Market, rather, investors should focus on the value of blockchain technology i.e. to solve real world problems and create sustainability for humanity.
Great thinkers of the past have taken out time to lay potential systems for us – like the projects mentioned above – and now that we have the technological capacity to implement them, it would be the time for us to take advantage for the benefit of humanity in general.
Communities should be allowed to organise and do things that are interesting to them without being forced or restricted and if we are unable to get around this, then there is a serious challenge at hand.
It is vital that we come to realise that letting communities operate more independently actually benefits the global economy because more groups have more power to do more things. For instance, local currency models such as Berkshares, which has been adopted in Massachusetts, have allowed local people to make their local economy more sustainable, particularly the turbulent agriculture industry. Since launching in 2006, more than $130,000 worth of BerkShares have entered circulation and more than 400 local businesses accept the currency. This is relatively successful for a regional, small-scale effort and it is a typical example of a community of doing what benefits itself.
Traditionally, humanitarian projects are not interesting to traditional investors because they have short-term gains and interests. This is why we need to move towards conscious capitalism. Conscious capitalism moves beyond the idea that capitalism is all about the money and while there can still be an economic incentive, the primary motive is to solve a problem for the common good.
Furthermore, another concern is the separation between the business and shareholders. Shareholders expect maximum profit even if the business has good intentions and this might limit the potential of good intentions. However, an interesting element of tokenisation is that the interests of investors and users become aligned. As the size of the ecosystem grows, the token value grows, implying that benevolent projects result in benevolent growth.
As QTUM Patrick Dai said, everyone is incentivised by tokens and hence contributes to the organisation. People profit when they work harder and contribute to the ecosystem. Everyone shares a bit of risk but the reward is huge. Due to secondary market on exchanges, there is liquidity and we lower the risk for everyone. Tokens provide a really great aligning of interests i.e. when the project is done for humanity and sustainability, then everyone has incentive to maximise the good.
People have free will and should be able to make their own decisions about where they will put their capital. The exchanges need to happen – it is simply freedom of expression to transact value. Stifling innovation through these sorts of measures will give power to those who provide leniency to these new technologies.
It is time to think collectively and work together for our bright future.
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