Tel Aviv – a city in Israel – has announced that it will be running a new blockchain and cryptocurrency project designed to boost its growing economy. Tel Aviv is known as one of the most prominent tech hubs in the world.
Israel and Crypto Come Together
Blockchain and crypto was originally designed to boost one’s financial means. Digital currencies were released with the potential of helping customers who either didn’t have access to reasonable credit or standard financial tools and offering them the ability to govern themselves when it came to money. If they didn’t have access to fiat, they could use crypto to purchase everyday needs.
Unfortunately, one of the biggest things getting in the way of these cryptocurrencies’ original goals is their volatility. Entities like bitcoin, for example, have been prone to wild price swings over the past several years. The currency fell from nearly $20K to about $3,500 between January and November of 2018, and only recently has it begun expanding its price once again.
Many forms of crypto have proven too vulnerable to outside market influence, and as a result, many retailers and merchants have been reluctant to accept them as forms of payment, which puts crypto-owners in the dark and unable to use their coins for goods and services.
But Tel Aviv is allegedly looking for ways to alleviate this problem. One of those ways is the region’s new pilot program, which began on May 5. It is set to last for one month and will offer rewards points to all people who use crypto to make purchases with local merchants through what’s known as the Colu app. Once users spend approximately $30, they will earn about 25 digital city currency units. The money can be spent at any outlet that operates through Colu’s payment system.
CEO of the Tel Aviv Foundation Hila Oren comments:
This way, you support the local businesses because people buy more from those little businesses, and (part of) every transaction is donated to a social cause.
The first social cause that will benefit through the Colu program will be what’s known as the “Children of Music” project, based at the Lev Yafo Youth Center. The platform will earn three dollars of every transaction that occurs during the pilot project.
Crypto Use Is Growing Everywhere
The project is part of what’s known as the 100 Resilient Cities program, which was created by the Rockefeller Foundation in the United States in 2013. Among the other cities taking part in the program include Belfast, Northern Ireland; Milan, Italy; Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, and Cape Town, South Africa.
After the project is over, Tel Aviv will publish a report of the results and determine if crypto usage was successful enough to continue. Granted they decide it is, the project will last permanently from there.