Show HN: Glo Dollar – the antipoverty stablecoin

18 points by gghootch 1 year ago | 4 comments
Hi everyone!

I just shipped a crypto project which I think all of you might actually like. It’s a digital dollar that helps end extreme poverty called Glo Dollar. We're backed by Sid Sijbrandij (GitLab).

How it works:

1. You buy $1 Glo Dollar for $1 USD

2. Our partners invest the $1 USD in US Treasuries

3. Revenue we make we donate to a charity called GiveDirectly.org who use it to fund basic income programs for people in extreme poverty

Note that you can _always_ redeem your $1 Glo Dollar for $1 USD again.

We’re doing this because we believe stablecoins are a public good and should be managed as one. At the moment, the two big stablecoin companies are making record profits for a tiny group of shareholders instead. Tether, the issuer of USDT, shared profits of ~$1.5 billion in Q1 on assets under management of ~60 billion, with just ~50 people on staff. Even though its success is mostly attributable to the ecosystem’s adoption.

Glo Dollar seeks to radically change this dynamic by repurposing its revenue to a good cause rather than risk/profit-seeking shareholders. At scale, we could lift millions of people out of extreme poverty. So even if you loathe crypto, we hope you at least appreciate what we’re trying to achieve. Very curious what y’all think :-)!

  • dgivney 1 year ago
    Hey guys, I have a couple of questions.

    1. When you say 'Our Partners' invest the money - who are they? Are they US entities and/or how often are you and your partners audited? Will you and your partners make those audits public? I think that would be a selling point over the other stable coins.

    2. You say that I can _always_ redeem my $1 Glo Dollar for $1 USD again. But if you're buying US Treasuries - only a few can redeem it when they want no? Others will have to wait for the bond to mature to get their money out. What percentage of reserves are kept in cash vs assets?

    3. You don't mention how much basic income my $1 USD in your example above will generate. How much _good_ can I expect to generate with my $1?

    4. Swapping $1 USD for a unit share of some US Treasuries seems like a simple transaction that would get played out millions of times everyday. Where does the crypto play fit into this?

    > Brale initially retains 100% of the earnings on the first $2M of assets backing the Glo Dollar.

    While trying to find these answers I noticed this statement at the bottom of your website. That's quite murky and I think you should mention that up front.

    • gghootch 1 year ago
      Thanks for the great questions! Find answers below, let me know if you have any further questions :-)

      1. Our issuing partner is Brale.xyz, a US regulated stablecoin company by Ben Milne, the founder of Dwolla. Brale works with partners on their end to invest in US Treasuries. More info here: https://www.glodollar.org/articles/brale-and-the-glo-foundat...

      On audits: we're working with a big 4 auditor on audit readiness. Our goal is to publish audits regularly and be fully transparent in both our operations and treasury holdings. Brale will publish monthly attestations of the assets backing Glo Dollar, and we will have audit rights over those assets on a periodical basis as well.

      2. While US Treasuries indeed have a maturity date, treasuries with a maturity date of up to 3 months are considered a "cash equivalent" because their market is so liquid. Because of this, they can easily be exchanged for cash in the event a lot of people want their cash back at once.

      3. Glo's per-dollar impact is low at first. As adoption grows, it ramps up. At scale, we expect to lift 1 person out of extreme poverty per $20,000 of Glo Dollar market cap by generating approximately $480 in interest that we can donate to GiveDirectly. We're not there yet, as we need to ramp up market cap beyond $2m first. More info here: https://www.glodollar.org/articles/from-bootstrap-to-high-im...

      4. Stablecoins provide actual utility to crypto traders (hence why there are $125B of them in circulation). So our thinking is that we can drive adoption by meeting traders where they are. We also think that Glo Dollar’s philanthropic mission will give it an edge for IRL stablecoin adoption. More on that here: https://www.glodollar.org/articles/vision-and-growth-strateg...

      Happy to answer any other questions!

      • dgivney 1 year ago
        Thanks for following up with those great answers - you've got a very interesting product. Best of luck!..
      • 1 year ago
      • atdrummond 1 year ago
        I am happy to answer any questions HN users may have; I’ve been working on Glo for the past year. I myself am a pretty heavy crypto skeptic. That being said, I am very strong believer in cash transfers as a method of providing economic security and believe Glo provides a way to scale funding for UBI that current charities simply cannot match, while governments seem to not be moving quickly enough to leverage the benefits of UBI for eliminating extreme poverty.