Original press release can be seen here.
Global Income Coin, a crypto non-profit company, secured $2 million to launch a new cryptocurrency that ultimately will provide a universal basic income of $1 a day to any person in the world. The funding comes from a personal donation of Sid Sijbrandij (co-founder and CEO of GitLab Inc.) and will be used to help fund operations, expand the team, and perform R&D. Global Income Coin is led by co-founders Jeffrey Milewski, Garm Lucassen and Jasper Driessens.
Global Income Coin’s mission is to help solve extreme poverty worldwide by generating a universal basic income (UBI) of $1 a day available to everyone on earth. Funding for the UBI will not depend on charitable donations, but will instead be sustained by the economic activity of a new cryptocurrency.
Later this year, Global Income Coin plans to launch a new cryptocurrency “GLO,” an alternative to fiat currencies such as the dollar, euro, and yen. Global Income Coin will incentivize consumers and businesses to use GLO for payments. The more GLO is used as money, the more UBI it generates.
“Global wealth levels suggest that we should be able to eradicate poverty if we work together. Global Income Coin can be a major, systemic part of the solution,” said Jeffrey Milewski, co-founder & CEO, Global Income Coin. Jeffrey Milewksi is an academic with a background focused on economics, finance and blockchain and holds an M.Sc. from the London School of Economics.
To drive global adoption of GLO in a scalable way, Global Income Coin will partner with for-profit companies like fintechs and crypto exchanges, and create financial incentives for contributors to the ecosystem. Global Income Coin also aims to drive adoption through community, sparking a social movement of individuals who choose to adopt GLO to make a positive impact.
“Earning opportunities are vastly different between countries, which helps to perpetuate poverty throughout the world,” said Sid Sijbrandij, founding donor, Global Income Coin. “It is a moral imperative to treat all people well.”
The more GLO is adopted as a payment method, the more demand for the coin there will be. Most cryptocurrencies (e.g. bitcoin) go up in value when demand rises, rewarding early investors. GLO works oppositely: when demand rises, more GLO is created and distributed as UBI. The increasing value of the network is shared equally among all humans, rather than concentrated.
Global Income Coin estimates that the amount of government-created money has grown by 8% per year between 1994-2019 (excluding the pandemic). At this continued rate of money supply growth, central banks will be printing an approximate $2860 billion per year by 2024. That is the potential amount of value Global Income Coin can unlock and repurpose to fund a global Universal Basic Income.
Jeffrey Milewski, CEO, “Blockchain technology can enable a fairer system for the distribution of wealth, allowing for greater equality of income at a global scale. In the current monetary system, governments capture all profits from central bank money creation. We envision a shift to a system where people pluck the fruits of economic growth directly and irrespective of their nationality.”
The non-profit is currently being incorporated as Global Income Coin Foundation in Zug, Switzerland. Its operations run entirely on philanthropic donations. Created GLO cryptocurrency is never used to fund the Foundation. There is also no pre-mine, founder/investor allocation, or any other for-profit scheme for founders, developers, employees or donors.
ABOUT GLOBAL INCOME COIN
Headquartered in Zug, Switzerland, Global Income Coin is a crypto non-profit founded in 2022. Global Income Coin is led by co-founder & CEO Jeffrey Milewsky, and backed by founding donor Sid Sijbrandij. Global Income Coin’s mission is to provide a Universal Basic Income (UBI) by launching cryptocurrency GLO and promoting its adoption as a form of money. As GLO usage grows, more GLO is created to meet demand, and distributed to individuals for free. For more information please visit website or assets folder, follow us on Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn or read our public draft whitepaper
