Cockroach of the global economy

Crypto is growing, and by now it's safe to say it's here to stay. But that doesn't mean we've arrived. For the thriving, long-term future we're all building towards, crypto's status should graduate from cockroach to flagship of the global economy.

We should want crypto to be embraced—not begrudgingly tolerated.

Three roadblocks stand in the way:

• To the general public, crypto is a mere gambling device
• To most politicians, crypto is an unavoidable annoyance
• To businesses, crypto is something best avoided

There are exceptions, sure—but these are niche. Senator Cynthia Lummis understands crypto values. Argentinians combat inflation with stablecoins. It won't be enough to reach an inflection point in global public perception.

We won't find the solutions simply further along crypto's current progress vectors. Higher TVL, clearer regulations and ETF approvals don't change how people feel—they just make for a more firmly entrenched cockroach.

The layman's eye-opener

What crypto needs to show is:

• A mainstream use case adopted by a critical mass of consumers or businesses (and isn't investment)
• An added value to the world that's so objectively good even skeptics must admit so

Both must be:

• Simple to understand. "Abstract" values (decentralization, permissionlessness) require too much prior education to click.
• Significant. "Marginal" improvements (24/7 markets, cross-border transactions) won't warrant the hassle in the eyes of the nay-sayers.

The relevance of crypto's many "abstract and marginal" benefits is obvious to those with a background in finance.

But most people don't have that background, and crypto's skeptics are so categorically dismissive that they're not receptive to explanations. Our arguments sound vague, far-fetched, and buzzword-ridden.

We need something powerful enough to be the layman's eye-opener.

Something to make people stop, and consider—could there be more to this crypto thing than I thought?

Glo Dollar wins hearts, unblocking the rest of crypto to win minds

Glo is good for crypto. It gives the industry four superpowers:

1. Glo enables zero-cost philanthropy—a non-investment use case
2. This is a strong enough reason to use stablecoins in everyday life
3. Glo is an unhateable cryptocurrency—even to crypto skeptics
4. At scale, Glo unlocks billions for a better world—an unignorable feat

Given enough adoption, these will inevitably transform public perception. Let me explain:

1. Zero-cost philanthropy / Patagonia for money

In 2022, Patagonia founder Yvon Chouinard donated 98% of his company to the Holdfast Collective, an environmental 501(c)4 non-profit.

In doing so, Chouinard enacted zero-cost philanthropy:

• Buying a sweater? Choose Patagonia—now the profit margin funds a healthier planet.
• Reframed: by buying Patagonia, you're funding a healthier planet.
• And you're doing so at zero cost. You donated nothing. You needed that sweater anyways; you just bought a different brand.

With this model, Patagonia gives consumers a unique feature: the power to zero-cost-fund something they deeply care about.

Glo Dollar offers that same feature. With Glo, anyone can fund good causes for free, just by using a different dollar.

And in contrast to Patagonia, users gets to pick their favorite cause. Here's how it works:

1. Buy Glo Dollars (with USD or other stablecoins)
2. Connect to the Glo App
3. See the monthly profit we're making off of your stablecoins
4. Select your favorite cause area (e.g. a healthier planet)
5. Each month, we donate our profits to top NGOs in that category

You're funding a better world at zero cost. It's Patagonia for money.

2. Everyday people using stablecoins in everyday life

Crypto advocacy would be much easier if it passed the toothbrush test: is this a product consumers use once or twice a day?

Unfortunately, almost no American uses crypto daily. Consumers could use stablecoins anytime they use money. But why would they?

Most people use money for:

1. Collecting salary
2. Paying bills
3. Buying things

Credit cards and bank accounts do that. Stablecoins don't do it better. Self-custody, atomic settlement? My mom doesn't even know what that means.

Changing habits is a hurdle. Stablecoins haven't been giving a strong enough reason.

Yet when it's for something they care about, Americans are more than willing to drive differently and eat differently:

• 16% drives electric or is seriously considering
• 11% changed what they eat to support the environment, 10% for animal welfare, and 7.5% for religion (kosher or halal)

Now, for the very first time, Glo gives Americans an actual reason to pay differently.

In fact, our users fill in that reason themselves by picking their favorite cause in the Glo App:

We do need to make this easy enough, of course.

We're close to rolling out Glo Cards. These are real Visa credit cards collateralized by a Glo Dollar balance that's used to settle at the end of the month.

This removes any friction to spend Glo Dollar like the US dollar.

But how about obtaining Glo Dollars? Most people get most of their money through paychecks. That's why, in partnership with payroll providers, we're launching Glo Dollar Payrolling.

Now employees can spend and earn Glo like they would US dollars.

Cards and Payrolling also make it easy for businesses to start using Glo Dollar as money. For them, it's zero-cost ESG or fits in within corporate social responsibility.

We'll keep adding tools to the utility stack as we build our vision of zero-cost philanthropy, accessible to everyone, frictionlessly embedded within an alternative dollar.

3. An unhateable currency (makes a great advocacy tool)

When trying to change someone's mind, start from common ground. What's something you both agree on?

Unfortunately, there's two types of crypto skeptics:

1. Understand the value of crypto, but believe it's a net negative
2. Don't see any point in crypto—not even in a single instance of it

With politicians or regulators of type #2, it's hard to even scratch the surface of a productive dialogue.

What these situations need is that one exception. The universal example you can always point to because everyone loves it.

Glo Dollar fits that vacancy. Even people who don't care about crypto really like Glo—they tell us frequently.

In fact, Glo Dollar is the theoretically most likeable cryptocurrency.

Pull out a whiteboard. What properties would the most likeable cryptocurrency have?

I'll go first:

1. Stable
2. Fully and transparently backed by cash and cash equivalents
3. Follows US monetary policy
4. Issued and regulated in the US
5. Developed by a not-profit-making organization (no one's getting rich)
6. Market cap goes up = more money goes to solving global issues
7. Enables zero-cost philanthropy

That's Glo Dollar, literally. What's not to like?

4. The world's largest philanthropic funding mechanism

Money is the bottleneck to many global issues: ending extreme poverty, hunger, malnutrition, HIV, malaria, tuberculosis, and even preventing pandemics.

Unfortunately, charitable funding is capped—there are only so many philanthropic dollars.

Glo Dollar unlocks a new funding stream for a better world.

And it's a potentially massive one:

As a stablecoin, Glo Dollar's immediate addressable market is the $160B stablecoin market. This industry earned $7.4B in 2023, so we could unlock up to $7.4B/year for a better world.

Consider the implications of crypto generating billions of charitable funding on a yearly basis:

• Is that something anyone could deny as an objectively great feat?
• Is that something that, as a politician, you'd want to stand in the way of?
• Is that something that, as a journalist, you could ignore?
• Is that something that would change how people feel about crypto?

But we're not bound by that $160B market. Glo Dollar can be used as money, so its actual TAM is $138T, the global M2 money supply.

If we take a conservative expectation of 2.4% profit on every dollar of market cap, this means we could unlock up to $3.3T/year for a better world.

Anything close to that would make Glo Dollar the world's largest philanthropic funding mechanism.

With one third of that, $1.1T/year, we could solve all the problems mentioned earlier (ending extreme poverty, hunger, malnutrition, HIV, malaria, tuberculosis, preventing the next pandemic).

Getting there doesn't have to rely on people's willingness to give away money. All it takes is adoption of a different kind of money.