[AnimalMuppet]

Forget "money" for a minute. Instead, think in terms of "stuff" - actual, physical goods, and also services.

Where does the stuff come from to lift every person out of poverty? There are only two possible answers - create more stuff, or redistribute the stuff that we have (or a combination of the two). Which one does Glo do, and how does it do that? Especially, "at sufficient scale", how would it do that?

[setgree]

A bit of both.

The long-term vision is to move (some portion of) economic activity onto a globally accessible stablecoin. We think this has potential to reduce friction in international finance & commerce, which will grow the economic pie. (The fact that it's actually still pretty hard to venmo someone from the US to Canada, or move dollars out of Argentina, creates a lot of deadweight loss and opportunities for rent-seeking.)

But ultimately Glo is redistributive. In the near-term, putting money into Glo is like putting money into a T-bill-linked savings account, except someone else gets the yield.

Hope that helps, happy to keep chatting, etc.

[an1sotropy]

Re-hashing "long-term vision" with happy talk does not actually answer the question. Try answering the question.

[setgree]

Which part could I have done better on?

I interpreted the question as asking whether we grow the size of the pie or redistribute differently and i answered that the goal is to do both. Step 1 is to be a good (the best, ideally) stablecoin, step 2 is to become increasingly viable as a currency, etc. We articulate these steps in more detail in the OP link, and for serious, if there is a part you’d like more clarity on or that you think isn’t very well fleshed out, I’ll do my best to engage directly with it.

Also, I know that crypto has a lot of scams and there’s good reason for distrust, but let me disclaim that answering these questions is literally part of my job and I’m trying my best to be candid and responsive. Please be kind if you can, thank you.

[an1sotropy]

Poverty is the part you could have done better on. For a family living in poverty, what about Glo specifically helps them?

[setgree]

Great, happy to clarify.

Glo is a fully-backed stablecoin, which means that for every dollar of glo that’s in circulation, we have a treasury of cash & cash equivalents equal to that amount. Some of that reserve is invested in short term Treasury bills, which create a yield. We give that yield directly to a charity called GiveDirectly, which then distributes the money directly to very poor people.

The idea is that Glo will compete with other stablecoins, and do all the other things that people currently do with USDC or tether, except that it will generate basic income for people living in extreme poverty as a side benefit.

Hope that helps.

[an1sotropy]

Thanks for the explanation.

I'll check back in a decade to see which has increased more: poverty, or "Glo".

[glocoin]

That they get a basic income of $30/month, which if you live on less than $1.90/day helps.

[an1sotropy]

ok but if GiveDirectly is doing good work, why not side-step the crypto-everything and spend your efforts helping people with IRAs to make qualified charitable distributions give directly to GiveDirectly? Or other ways of directly supporting GiveDirectly?

[AnimalMuppet]

He did. The question was, "create more stuff" or "redistribute existing stuff", and the answer was "redistribute existing stuff", with a side helping of "increase existing stuff by reducing deadweight loss".