Jasper Driessens (Co-founder, Glo Foundation)
• 650 million people live in extreme poverty. Basic income programs can fix this, but require money.
• Money now comes from donations, but there’s not enough donations in the world.
• Introducing Glo, a new stablecoin that helps end extreme poverty by redirecting 100% of revenue to basic income programs.
• Extreme poverty is the worst kind of poverty and is defined as living with under $2.15/day.
650 million people currently live in extreme poverty. The good news is there is a relatively simple solution: giving them basic incomes. This has been done on small scales and generally works well. The bad news is that to give everyone in extreme poverty a basic income, we’d need ~$311 billion per year. Currently, these basic incomes are funded by charitable donations. But that won’t cut it: total overseas giving, private and public, from all countries combined is $243 billion per year. So even if 100% of that were directed to basic incomes (highly unlikely), it’s not enough.
Can we find other sources of money to lift people out of extreme poverty?
Can we fund basic incomes without depending on donations?
Introducing Glo (USDGLO), the stablecoin that reduces extreme poverty. Exactly like other stablecoins we invest our assets under management in US Government Bonds: T-Bills. Still, unlike other stablecoins we redirect 100% of the proceeds of those T-Bills to basic income programs for people in extreme poverty. Currently, stablecoin issuers make 4.2% interest on their assets. With a $60 billion+ market cap, Tether is making $2 billion annually in interest. That’s enough to lift over 4 million people out of extreme poverty. All you need to do is switch to a different stablecoin. Oh, and more thing: transfers in USDGLO dollars are 10% cheaper than the competition due to smart-contract optimization.
