Mahi Sall, Advisor, Fintech-Bank Partnerships, Payments and Financial Inclusivity
January 25th, 2023
Not Boring | Packy McCormick | Apr 25, 2022
Source: Celo.org
Financialization is a dirty word, but the system is particularly dirty for those whose interests don’t have a price. Ledgard wants to fix that, and help reduce extreme poverty in the process. It’s just one example – albeit the most colorful – of a movement called Regenerative Finance (ReFi).
ReFi is a beautiful idea – a re-imagining of the financial system using the tools humanity now has at its disposal to better account for the needs of all stakeholders, current and future. It puts a price on externalities, charging those who create negative externalities and rewarding those who create positive externalities.
Celo is a carbon-negative EVM-compatible Layer 1 blockchain (I’ll explain) designed to make it accessible and usable by anyone with a smartphone, anywhere in the world. It’s unique among blockchains in many ways, including the fact that it has its own native stablecoins in different denominations – cUSD, cEUR, and cREAL, with many more to come – and in that it plans to back those stablecoins with 40% natural capital backed assets – like forest NFTs and Ledgard’s L-Marks – in the Celo Reserve over the next four years. That’s a huge demand signal to the market: build things that are good for the planet, and we’ll buy the tokens.
That idea came from Charles Eisenstein’s Sacred Economics:
If you back money with more of the things you want to see in the world, you’ll get more of those things.
Celo is based on a belief that programmable money will unlock new economic models, and that changing the features of money (which is possible because money’s just a technology) can lead to a more beautiful world. And it’s a bet that mission-aligned builders will care as much about a Layer 1’s community as they do its tech specs. When everything is open, liquidity has no loyalty, and each blockchain’s technology continues to improve, standing for something, and building a community around it, might be a key competitive advantage in a multi-chain world.
Money is a technology. Technology is a story with wings
Celo seems like the L1 that’s most excited to push the limits of this new primitive, not to generate eye-popping APYs or attract the most total value locked (TVL), but to build regenerative systems by changing the story of money.
Specifically, in his keynote, Sep said that Celo asked: What features of money might lead to a more beautiful world? He listed five things:
The National Crowdfunding & Fintech Association (NCFA Canada) is a financial innovation ecosystem that provides education, market intelligence, industry stewardship, networking and funding opportunities and services to thousands of community members and works closely with industry, government, partners and affiliates to create a vibrant and innovative fintech and funding industry in Canada. Decentralized and distributed, NCFA is engaged with global stakeholders and helps incubate projects and investment in fintech, alternative finance, crowdfunding, peer-to-peer finance, payments, digital assets and tokens, blockchain, cryptocurrency, regtech, and insurtech sectors. Join Canada's Fintech & Funding Community today FREE! Or become a contributing member and get perks. For more information, please visit: www.ncfacanada.org
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