eToro used GoodDollar’s UBI wallet to facilitate employees’ $100,000 donation program as part of UBI pilot
GoodDollar, a non-profit initiative working to deliver universal basic income (UBI) through blockchain technologies, launched their wallet for delivering basic income this past week by facilitating $100,000 in coronavirus relief donations for investment platform eToro. eToro used GoodDollar’s UBI wallet to facilitate their employee coronavirus relief campaign, with over 300 employees using the wallet to donate $100,000 to local Israeli charities to support the vital work being done to fight the coronavirus pandemic. The four charities are Sheba Medical Centre, Kaplan Medical Centre, no2violence, and Leket Israel.
Commenting on the donations, Yoni Assia CEO and Co-founder of eToro, said: “This initiative was not just about doing good for others with a charitable donation, it was about showing the strength of a collective committed to social impact and global welfare.
“The coronavirus pandemic reinforces the argument for a universal basic income. Direct cash transfers and relief packages are now part of the everyday political conversation demonstrating the importance that regular minimum income plays in bolstering an entire financial system.”
GoodDollar’s goal is to produce a framework for delivering global, sustainable, and scalable universal basic income through blockchain technology. Universal basic income, otherwise known as UBI, is the idea of providing people with an unconditioned, recurring cash payment – a policy proposal that has grown in global awareness and popularity over the past several months following the economic fallout from the coronavirus pandemic. GoodDollar’s vision is a world in which everyone has access to basic economic assets, and aims to give away small amounts of basic income to onboard new users into the digital asset space. The solution includes a cryptocurrency, G$, which is distributed as UBI, and a digital UBI wallet, which it recently launched in its collaboration with eToro. A public demo version of the wallet is now available to the public online.
In January 2020, GoodDollar partnered with eToro, its core corporate sponsor, to launch a limited test of the GoodDollar payments system. The goal was to stimulate trade in GoodDollar coins between people in a closed marketplace (GoodMarket) for people to trade second-hand goods and services between the 500 employee pool in eToro’s office in Tel Aviv. Over the five-month closed beta, hundreds of participating employees conducted tens of thousands of dollars worth of commerce.
With the test closing at the end of April, employees were able to use their UBI wallets to transfer their remaining GoodDollars to one of four local charities with eToro matching the donations with real dollars. To increase the impact eToro airdropped an additional demo 200 GoodDollars into the wallets of participating employees. In sum, over $100,000 in donations were contributed to relief organizations.
GoodDollar is months away from the live launch of its protocol and G$ coin, which is designed to generate and finance UBI on a global scale. The coronavirus relief programme marked the launch of the UBI wallet, the sunsetting of the eToro closed beta, as the GoodDollar team works towards public release of the currency. A demo of the UBI wallet is now available on GoodDollar.org.
Yoni Assia adds: “GoodDollar is all about leveraging innovation and network effects to inspire more people to do good for one another. This is the perfect book-end of one chapter, as we strive towards greater impact and giving every person the opportunity to do good for others, in our public release.
“GoodDollar is working towards delivering a global UBI solution by embracing blockchain technology and token design, to reduce global wealth inequality. The global coronavirus pandemic and the months of uncertainty ahead, show there is a desperate need for UBI. We believe this is technically achievable through creating financial products that are inclusive by design, and generate the right incentives to deliver on these designs.”
eToro was founded in 2007 with the vision of opening up the global markets so that everyone can invest in a simple and transparent way. The eToro platform enables people to invest in the assets they want, from stocks and commodities to cryptoassets. We are a global community of more than thirteen million registered users who share their investment strategies; and anyone can follow the approaches of those who have been the most successful. Due to the simplicity of the platform users can easily buy, hold and sell assets, monitor their portfolio in real-time, and transact whenever they want. www.etoro.com
GoodDollar is a non-profit founded in 2018 that is determined to deliver universal basic income to the world through leveraging blockchain technologies. We do this through conducting monetary experiments and presenting a new framework for generating, financing and distributing universal basic income on a global scale. Our vision is a world where everyone has access to basic economic assets through building financial products that are inclusive by design.
Disclaimer: eToro is regulated in Europe by the Cyprus Securities and Exchange Commission, by the Financial Conduct Authority in the UK and by the Australian Securities and Investments Commission in Australia.