From time to time universal basic income (UBI) gets brought up, some see it as an unrealistic idea, while others think it will be a future necessity. It's inevitable that one day most jobs will be replaced by a mix of robots and AI, but at the same time how would you finance UBI and make it sustainable?
A few years back Finland launched their own UBI trial, and was the first country to do so. For two years they gave a group of randomly selected citizens 560 Euro a month, and compared them against a control group of people on unemployment benefits. The results are very interesting! People reported an increase in happiness and financial wellbeing, and a small increase in employment when compared to the people on benefits. The reason for the increase in employment is that many people were now open to taking a lower paying or part time job. Many countries have closely watched the trial and see it as a possible solution to help people survive events like a global recession or pandemic.
One new organization called GoodDollar has recently launched their own version of a cryptocurrency backed UBI.
What is GoodDollar?
GoodDollar is a non-profit organization led by the founder of the popular investing platform Etoro, that provides a UBI to anyone that wants it, with the goal of reducing poverty and income inequality around the world.
Sounds good, but how exactly does that work and how do they finance it?
Here is a quick video from GoodDollar to explain the concept:
At first this seems like a reasonable concept, and it is! But there are significant risks to the project as well. The biggest hurdle for GoodDollar will be to attract enough supporters that are willing to stake their crypto for the cause. Only time will tell if their ambitious project will take off, but I do think that it has a lot of potential. If enough non-profits, individuals, governments, and companies are willing to support the project, then this could be the first instance of a sustainable UBI.
The next step will be to get enough companies to accept $G as a form of payment. Maybe in the same way that some companies have started to accept crypto payments, or to have a debit card that automatically exchanges the $G to fiat like Crypto.com does. As of writing $G hasn't been listed on any exchange yet, so it cannot be traded either. But keep in mind that GoodDollar has only been active since September, so many things are still in development.
The great thing about this project is that noone has to donate their crypto, just stake it, and in the future they will be able to get yield payouts from the GoodDollar Reserve. This makes it much easier to attract supporters and gives them a good incentive to join the cause. There is still the risk of a supporter suddenly withdrawing their crypto from the platform, and thereby lowering the value of $G, but I think this is probably the fairest way to make this work.
As of today these companies have signed up in support of GoodDollar, and more will be announced soon.
How do you get GoodDollars?
To be able to claim $G you just have to create an account on their website, after that you will have to pass a very simple form of KYC, just to proof that you are a real person, and then you'll be able to make a claim every day. Right now you can only claim $G by going to their website, but they are developing apps for both Android and iOS.
Where can you use GoodDollars?
Right now the only place to use your $G is on the GoodMarket. The GoodMarket is an online community built marketplace on Facebook were people can post jobs or products in exchange for $G. This is a good beginning and it will be interesting to see how it evolves. Even though GoodDollar has only been active for such a short time, some people have already been able to create a small business on the platform, even though the exact current value of $G is unknown.
The Future?
I'm very exicted to see how GoodDollar develops in the future!
What I'm hoping to see soon is the announcement of more supporters and also places to spend our $G. We also need some more clarity on how much $G is exactly worth and how much is being staked.
The people behind GoodDollar are actively developing the platform and if you check their website they seem to have a very knowledgable team that has done a lot of research into the idea of UBI.
For now I would recommend anyone to sign up and start claiming $G, you never know how much it be worth one day!
Thanks for reading and I hope you enjoyed this article!
