The first LOATKI + cryptocurrency is in the works, with its creators stating that “they want to use the financial power of the community in order to change the world”.
According to Reuters, the so-called maricoin, named after a pun derived from a LGBT + attack on people in Spanish, began on Friday with a week-long pilot test involving 10 companies in Chueca, known as the neighborhood LOATKI + of Madrid.
Proponents of maricoin aim to start trading the cryptocurrency early next year, paving the way for its use as a means of payment in friendly businesses and events to LOATKI + around the world.
“Since we are running this economy, why not take advantage of this community of ours, instead of the banks, the insurance companies or the big companies that often do not help LGBTQI + people?” said by phone to the Thomson Reuters Foundation his 48-year-old co-creator, Juan Belmonte.
Belmonte, a hairdresser and businessman, said the idea for his LGBT + cryptocurrency came while he was having fun with friends at the Pride event in Madrid in July this year.
But he traces the roots of the project to 2017, when the HazteOir team launched a campaign against transgender rights.
The group’s campaign was quickly banned by the Spanish authorities, but Belmonte said it made him realize that “he had to do something to help harness the LGBT + community’s financial influence in the fight against homophobia”.
The global LOATKI + market is huge
The global market for LOATKI + is huge, with a survey by the Swiss bank Credit Suisse showing that it could be ranked as the fourth largest economy in the world, behind Japan but ahead of Germany in terms of purchasing power.
A 2018 study conducted by Kantar Consulting and the social network LGBT + Hornet estimated the purchasing power of the community in the United States alone reached 1 trillion. dollars in 2016, equal to that of African American or Hispanic consumers.
The maricoin is backed by the Miami-based Borderless Capital Company and Francisco Alvarez, chief executive of the initiative, said 8,000 people are already on the list and 8,000 potential buyers are on a waiting list to buy maricoins before it goes trading.
According to their plans, the cryptocurrency will be accepted as payment to companies – from restaurants and cafes to shops and hotels – that have signed an “equality manifesto”.
Among other things, the manifesto defends the rights of LGBTQI + individuals and “all those suffering from exclusion”, as well as the support of a “social, moral, transversal and transparent economy”.
“The shops that accept our coin will be listed on our map, which will act as a LOATKI + guide for anyone visiting any city in the world,” said 48-year-old Alvarez.
“If they violate any of the points in our anti-discrimination manifesto, for example if they fire a pregnant woman because of her pregnancy, they will be expelled from the maricoin,” he added.
The currency will also have its own language related to LGBTQI + individuals. For example transfers between maricoin users are called “trans”.
Alvarez and Belmonte also hope that the project can create a source of funding for LGBTQI + businesses and community initiatives worldwide.
“We will be able to give microcredit to people to set up a small LGBTQ-friendly cafe in Colombia or to support projects that help queer refugees leave countries where they will be stoned to death,” he said. “We look forward to changing the world,” they said.
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Source From: Capital
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