After the world of finance, the blockchain technology expands into crowdfunding. In France the spreading of “minibons”, nominal tools dedicated to crowdfunding platforms, similar to our minibonds, pusher the Financement Participatif France (FPF) association to cooperate with the Caisse des Dépôts, in the implementation of a blockchain based infrastructure entirely devoted to managing SMEs loans. Read it in Italian.
The platform developed by FPF allows users to issue and underwrite minibons, enabling companies and people to track them and manage them. Basically the advantage is that investors can keep a digital record of securities. Not only: the issuance of minibons is faster and cheaper than standard bonds. SMEs and start ups can obtain the money they need to develop their business of refinance it without having to ask for bank loans (to better understand how the blockchain technology works and which are the opportunities it can offer, you may read “Blockchain, the “next big” thing aimed to revolutionize marketing).
And although 5 member out of 60, i.e. Credit.fr, Lumo, Everfip, Unilend and Feedelios, already use this technology, the remaining 56 members will have to wait until the end of this year to take advantage of it; however, the long-term target is more ambitious than this: allowing the exchange of minibons in a secondary market by means of the blockchain technology (Comment la blockchain participe au développement du crowdfunding)
Another system based on the blockchain is the one adopted by the SMEs crowdfunding platform named SmartAngels. In this case the agreement for the development of the platform was signed by BNP Paribas Securities Services but, like in the Caisse des Dépôts case, the platform enables those who issue the Securities to digitalize their record and to investors to handle their portfolio online through a decentralized and hacker-proof record.
Another example is Lumo. It is a crowdfunding platform specializing in renewable energies which has issued minibons worth 800.000 Euros. In addition to the interests earned, every six months investors receive a certain amount of “SolarCoins”, a sort of energy currency ( always traceable on the blockchain) proving how much energy has actually been produced by the solar project which users have decided to finance. The “exchange rate” is the SolarCoin corresponding to 1 Megawat/h produced. This way investors realize what impact their investments have made on their environment. The green energy supplier ekWateur already accepts such SolarCoins as a method of payment and Lumo claims that in the future we will be able to pay for all services, such as urban tolls, directly with the eco-crypto-currency.
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If you liked this post, you could read: “How blockchain is changing everything from entertainment to smart contracts“
