Thursday, September 9, 2021

The future of money — currencies that benefit the planet, as well as our wallets.

We are at a critical point in history for two major reasons: our expedition of climate change, and the natural redistribution of wealth that is happening right now.

It is now scientific consensus that humans have contributed significantly towards climate change and caused irreparable ecological damage ranging from plastic in our oceans to habitat destruction. With this data and subsequent conclusions only decades old, we have yet to figure out a plan to heal. Global powers focus on reducing consumption and carbon taxes to do the heavy lifting. Large corporations invest in renewable energy and other technology. Municipalities create incentives to encourage sustainability through programs and other forms of investment. Common citizens can take incremental steps in their daily decisions, specifically the products that they purchase and the means of delivering them.

What has accelerated humans to the top of the planet’s custodial chain is our ability to adapt and evolve. Yet this is the same paradox that causes a lot of the problems we see today. We want more, quicker, faster and for less. We are evolving our processes and procedures for living at a faster rate than the Earth can currently support. This will be the same mechanism that will be the cause of our ultimate demise.

Another natural cycle that appears time and time again is the redistribution of power and wealth. Super powers come and go; wars, revolutions, natural events all prompting metachanges in the way we run our communities, countries and more recently, our planet.

Cryptocurrencies are providing an alternative to the archaic value structure that governs the world. Fiat currencies, such as USD, GBP, and EUR to name a few, are all inflationary and underwritten by basically nothing (ironically the same argument used by those afraid of crypto against cryptocurrencies). No longer is there a ‘gold standard’. No longer does that bank actually have enough physical cash to cover all its debts. When you scratch beneath the surface of our current financial system, the house of cards becomes painfully apparent.

The future of money is in shared value, and adoption. Yes, gold and silver are ultimately physical assets that have real world uses and are finite, but their extraction is harmful to the planet, and they do not underwrite the fiat currencies that run the world anymore. There is absolutely no reason why a cryptocurrency cannot fulfill the role of ‘global store of value’. Personally, I see these cryptocurrencies being those that are non-inflationary, or even deflationary by nature, such as Bitcoin. I see these more as assets, similar to ‘digital gold’ as has often been described before.

But Bitcoin in it’s current form cannot fulfill the role of ‘medium of exchange’ of value. It is too slow, expensive and environmentally harmful to mine given the outdated proof of work system. This is where other blockchains come into their own. Again, ideally finite, but faster, cheaper, and greener, such as Elrond, Algorand, Cardano, and Ethereum, to name a few.

PlanetPay bridges the gap between these two huge problems facing humanity today. PlanetPay will leverage blockchain technology for doing what it does best — removing middlemen from value transactions — most obviously in the financial space. Merchant fees will remain, albeit low, but instead of those fees going to banks, they will be redistributed to environmental causes. This approach costs the consumer absolutely no more than when using your credit or debit card today. Yet the planet stands to gain from every transaction you make.

PlanetPay is starting life on the Binance Smart Chain (BSC), to take advantage of its low fees and high speed. It is beginning as a community token to build a following and address the issues of awareness and adoption. This is referred to as ‘Phase 1’. The value of the PlanetPay token will be much lower at the start of life, and therefore at the beginning there is a 5% transaction fee in order to cover the project’s development and to start building the environmental funds (this is broken down as a 2% development fee, 2% to the environmental fund, but also 1% redistributed to holders of the token as a reward for holding).

Phase 2 will see the use of presale funds go towards bringing in top talent from the blockchain and traditional payment worlds. This is referred to as the ‘project delivery’ phase. With the $PLANET token being exchanged on the open market, its natural value will be derived over time.

Phase 2 will offer an app wallet to store the $PLANET tokens, one for merchants and one for consumers. It is likely that there may also be an NFC enabled cash card too for early adopters, of course printed onto hard biodegradable materials such as card, not plastics. Merchants accepting $PLANET tokens will display a sign in their shop window or on their websites. And the rest remains largely the same for the consumer. You head to your favourite coffee shop or store that accepts PlanetPay and simply tap your card or phone to purchase your items, exactly the same as you do today. Yet 1% of the transaction will go to environmental projects as voted for by the community (being anyone that holds PlanetPay tokens). Imagine if that happened for every transaction, made by every person on the planet. Just think of the good that we could do!

The world is waking up to digital currencies. This idea is not new. Governments are in a race to create their own Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs). Admittedly these will be faster to be adopted due to governments imposing them upon their citizens. Yet these offer little to no security for the individual, with every transaction being scrutinised by the powers that be, and a real risk of confiscation should the ruling power decide that a debt is due. I see this as a Big Brother move, and that is why I personally will not be adopting CBDCs in a hurry, although they will have a role to play in the future of money. Decentralised, privately owned global digital currencies like PlanetPay (amongst others) offer a solution to the above problems.

The global team behind PlanetPay are all business-savvy entrepreneurs and developers. There is a wealth of experience we bring that is not often found in new BSC token launches, and much thought has gone into the project to date. This is not just an idea. There is a clear roadmap through Phase 1 and into Phase 2.

The stage is set. It’s time to phase out the concept of traditional financial payment models in exchange for community enabled currencies that are not able to be manipulated by governments and authorities, and that solve two of the biggest threats we face as human beings today: the destruction of this planet we call home, and the demise of money as we know it.

Twitter
https://twitter.com/Planetpayio

Telegram
https://t.me/planetpayofficial

Website
https://www.planetpay.io

Whitepaper
https://planetpay.io/static/60952b05f3076157cb349c70/t/6114f2dd7a9cac0163c60781/1628762856906/PlanetPay.io+Whitepaper+v2.2.1.pdf


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