What do cows have to do with Gold?
“Poor people can’t afford to take risks. What they have, they need it to survive. Rich people can waste large chunks of their money and still be relatively okay. If the poor did that, they die.
It’s ignorant to argue most poor people are lazy — they just can’t take risks.”
@Qayzr on twitter
Asia so diverse
The sheer number of financial problems facing the rural population is quite staggering. Access to anything other than the most basic of banking facilities is usually impossibly difficult. Getting a bank loan tends to require either collateral or credit history — both of which are hard to get when you are fighting to get started. And even if you are able to get that credit, you are oftentimes left holding a loan that is typically subject to the whims of international financiers.
Enter Sentinel Chain
Sentinel chain was launched with the dream of allowing farmers to collateralise their livestock in order to obtain business loans. Sounds a bit ethereal until you meet Roy Lai the architect behind the project. Roy is an enterprise tech veteran originally from the banking sector.
Roy realised that most of the pieces already existed but there was no platform to allow them to work together. Roy describes the details far better than I can but essentially he is building a network of “national” blockchain platforms in which all these parties can interact, all connected to each other and to ethereum using bridges based on the POA Network. In addition his team work to fill in the gaps subsidising activities such as putting RFID tags on cows (a joint project with the Myanmar government).
The platform allows a farmer to insure his livestock and gain access to liquidity and buy the supplies he needs.
In the words of Roy Lai, CEO, founder of Sentinel Chain
“The ‘poor’ are much richer than they think. What they need is a solution to unlock their economic potential. We bring to them the Sentinel Chain, a blockchain based solution to the problem of ‘dead capital’.”
Access to credit is not the only problem
Looking back at least to the 1980’s, financial turmoil seems to hit Southeast Asia roughly every ten years. Each country is hit differently but the effect on the economy can be devastating due to the volatility of exchange rates. With all asian economies dependent on trade to some degree, a hedge against exchange rate volatility is required to guarantee that you can stay in business.
HelloGold — helping people to secure a better future
With its spiritual roots in the Asian Financial Crisis of 1997 and built on Robin Lee’s experience as Chief Financial Officer of the World Gold Council, HelloGold was founded to solve exactly this problem. The problem that in many parts of Asia, the less fortunate have very little access to any form of savings product that protect them against inflation and against financial crises. HelloGold is now helping about ten thousand Malaysians protect their savings and is poised to venture into Thailand very soon. HelloGold’s tokenised gold product s backed fully allocated, vaulted, insured gold. With gold historically proving resilient, or even counter to economic fluctuations, HelloGold provide a simple affordable, accessible savings vehicle for people who do not have access to other investment options.
How HelloGold fits perfectly with Sentinel Chain
Currently, Sentinel Chain offers its customers the ability to secure affordable, accessible credit. HelloGold will offer these same customers to save through gold, an ideal saving product that complements existing cash-based savings products..
Gold, having long been regarded as a safe store of value proves ideal to meet that requirement for emerging economies. Tokenised gold, being native to the blockchain, fits neatly into the Sentinel Chain economy and will further the reach of HelloGold in helping underserved rural communities by assisting those served by Sentinel Chain.
More information about HelloGold
Web : https://hellogold.com
Blog : https://medium.com/hellogold
Twitter : @FoundationHG
Sentinel Chain
Web : https://sentinel-chain.org/
Blog : https://medium.com/sentinelchain
Twitter : @sentinelchain
