Its a bit counter-intuitive when we tag a country (Brazil) to a crypto start-up. While the operational capability for Moeda is currently based in Brazil, the entire world can invest into their projects using the MDA token.
Moeda was launched in 2017 at a UN hackathon with a view to address the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals. Their vision is to facilitate capital for social entrepreneurs who have had challenges financing their business via the traditional banking system. With their platform, where they bring the community of social entrepreneurs to the world stage, investors across the world can invest in projects, while having complete transparency on the project details.
This year Moeda have onboarded 18 projects involving family farming cooperatives in Brazil. They are also developing the Moeda Seeds App that will help global investments to arrive. In Q2 this year Moeda moved its transactions to IBM’s Hyperledger fabric composer.
In the past 18 months, Moeda have made significant progress not just in Brazil, but across other neighbouring countries.
- They opened up operations in Uruguay and became the first blockchain firm in a free trade zone.
- Moeda’s CEO Taynah Reis, joined Brazil’s Parliamentary Special Committee on the legislation of virtual currency.
- Moeda presented their proposition at the UN General Assembly on Sustainable Development Goals Impact Zones.
- In Jan 2018, Moeda started funding its first set of projects for rural Brazil
- Taynah has also spent time with UN leaders, Nobel Prize winner Muhammad Yunus, and several top world organisations including the World Economic Forum, where they showcased and validated their business model
- More recently Moeda implemented a fiat pegged token (MDABRL) to be used in its ecosystem.
One of the projects that Moeda have taken on board their seed programme is that of Divinia. For more than 10 years, Divina from Cooperval produced and sold frozen fruit pulp, vegetables and baked goods to schools in Formosa, Goias. The group now wants to boost production and increase their income.
For the financing of the expansion, Moeda developed a Seed Project focused on the Baru, a traditional chestnut from the region. Through this project the cooperative in partnership with a local beer company will produce 1500 bottles of Baru nut beer. Moeda have helped them establish the partnership, in marketing the product and with the entire business plan to ensure investors make returns. This project, thats planned to go on for 4 months, will give investors a 10% return within that period.
Moeda are also working with a group of women that focused on 21 local projects from more than 8 states in the region developing 25 value chains pertaining to extractivism, agricultural extractivism and traditional family farming, including the Babassu palm production chain.
These are some inspiring coming out of the blockchain world, and for people asking for real world implementations of the technology, all I would say is, look at the emerging markets – its all happening there.
Arunkumar Krishnakumar is a VC investor focusing on Inclusion, a writer and a podcast host.
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