Social purpose – blockchain as leveler

As a means of raising capital, blockchain has the potential to improve environmental impacts and long-standing disparities between the haves and the have-nots. An Australian firm called African Palm Corp is working towards launching a cryptocurrency with each unit backed by a metric ton of sustainable-source palm oil.

As this book goes to publication, the EU is preparing to ban the import of Indonesian and Malaysian palm oil—85% of the current supply. The means of farming palm oil causes habitat destruction on a massive scale. Conversely, this STO aims to purchase four million hectares of land on which palm trees already stand, potentially reducing unemployment in four West African countries on a massive scale.

Another project headed by the founder of a Haitian orphanage has the potential to improve tax collection and provide physical security for a great number of vulnerable people. The Caribean Crypto Commission is a project to create a coin employed by a sort of cryptoentity; governments would allow the formation of a crypto corporation with a greatly reduced tax rate in exchange for that entity having public financials. Recording that business' transactions publicly on a blockchain would allow the company to create verifiable balance sheets and income statements. An entity subject to a 15% tax rate would be an improvement over an entity that nominally has a 40% tax rate (and which, in practice, pays nothing).

This concept also provides physical security to people living in temporary housing in earthquake-rattled Haiti, where banks are expensive and cash is kept in tents and houses—putting the occupants in danger of robbery. The alternative? An SMS wallet on your smartphone. Via a gateway, a program on your phone can send and receive text messages that can credit an offline wallet, even without mobile data.