On November 28, 2008, Yoni Assia, who earned a master’s degree in computer science in 2007, authored a blog post called “Good Dollar – The Visible Hand.”
He wrote,
“The new currency Good Dollar is the basis of a new economic framework, the main difference between this currency and all other currencies are:
- Direct ownership connection between the entities and the currency (transparent money)
- Decreasing interest rates on larger deposits (Good Value or Good interest rates)”
Assia’s 10-year-old paper detailed a new monetary system with a new type of money.
“Assuming that the administration of a new currency would be fully automated, small deposits should get at least the same interest rates as large ones, and eventually smaller deposits should receive higher interest rates than larger deposits, because:
• intrinsic individual/entity value (individual value)”
The basic tenets of the Good Dollar share a key characteristic with cryptocurrency: transparency.
“Assuming that eventually all money is transparent and all his funds are in the system, an individual who has only $100 should receive higher interest rate since he needs more support to maintain his basic life necessities, while an individual that has $1M in deposit should receive a lower interest rate since he can add more value to the world through investments.”
One month prior to Assia’s “Good Dollar” thesis, the pseudonymous Satoshi Nakamoto authored a white paper called “Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System,” espousing a new payment system that would ignite the cryptocurrency movement, its call for decentralization and the end of traditional banking.
Assia, whose blog post held a vision, would not publicly revisit Good Dollar for the next 10 years.
In 2007 he would co-found eToro, the social trading and multi-asset investment platform where users can learn from other users by sharing strategies. In 2014 eToro would introduce Bitcoin to its three million users with a three-click process for placing buy orders.
The trading platform now offers several cryptocurrencies, including Ethereum, XRP, EOS and Binance Coin.
Today eToro has expanded to over nine million users. To service the growing network, the company announced on Tuesday the launch of a proprietary crypto wallet that will support Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, Ethereum and Litecoin.
The launch comes one day prior to the announcement of eToro’s new cryptocurrency experiment: GoodDollar.
The experiment is a long-germinating project for Assia. It uses the ethos and transparency of cryptocurrencies to address a global financial system that has placed 94% of the world’s wealth into the hands of 20% of the population, which has created enduring and systemic poverty in developing countries as well as swaths of tent cities across the US.
It challenges billionairism: the handful of people – 42 – who hold more wealth than the poorest 3.7 billion people on the planet.
While there are many approaches to fighting poverty and ending homelessness, many of these ideas are based on the current rules of the existing monetary structure.
https://twitter.com/krassenstein/status/1054360473062100992
Assia wants to apply blockchain technology and cryptocurrency as the pivotal keys for making deep structural changes.
In his announcement on Wednesday about the launch of GoodDollar, Assia writes,
“It is a series of tests with the ultimate purpose of reducing wealth inequality through blockchain technology. The mission of the not-for-profit blockchain-based project is to forge a new, global, open-source cryptocurrency (called GoodDollar) to distribute money using the principles of universal basic income (UBI).
The issue of wealth inequality has been at the forefront of my mind for most of my adult life. It is a critical economic challenge of our time. However, I’ve long felt a solution is conceivable when all the elements are aligned….
GoodDollar is still at the experimenting stage with our global crypto UBI system. Engineers, product designers and economists are currently developing the prototype and model. After almost a year of research, we already have advanced formulas built, and are trialling smart contracts and other exciting stuff.”
You can read more about the project here.
