AvocadoCoin, a new cryptocurrency, promises to improve safety, sustainability, and traceability in the avocado industry. Can it work?
In February, just days before the Super Bowl—the most-watched sporting event of the year—a potential avocado shortage threatened to leave those gameday chips and guacamole bowls empty. The reason was that U.S. inspectors in Mexico, where 80 percent of avocados sold in the U.S. come from, had received verbal threats via a phone call. The move led the U.S. to temporarily ban avocados that had not yet been inspected.
Inspectors ensure quality—fruit free from pests, essentially—which has helped to buoy the economy in Mexico and for U.S. retailers and restaurants, especially when it comes to avocados.
Although details of the threat weren’t made public, it was likely the result of drug cartels that are widespread in Michoacán, where the crop of avocados was coming from. Cartels have, in recent years, “diversified” their income by tapping into the booming avocado industry, as well as other crops bound for export. Michoacán exports about $3 billion worth of avocados a year, according to The New York Times.
The ban was lifted after eight days—running through the NFL’s Super Bowl LVI on February 13th, during which the company Avocados from Mexico ran a commercial featuring comedian Andy Richter. The U.S. said it lifted the ban after Mexican agencies agreed to secure more safety measures for U.S. inspectors.
AvocadoCoin
GreenCrytpo Corporation, a blockchain technology company out of Estonia, says it could help the industry improve its traceability and safety as well as increase its sustainability metrics with its Green Gold Project and its first cryptocurrency, AvocadoCoin.
GreenCrypto released a $600 million initial coin offering late last year across four international exchanges. AvocadoCoin is the first of its digital security tokens to be offered. The total supply of AVDO was set at 21 million coins—the same as Bitcoin.
“If you missed the chance to become a millionaire through Bitcoin, this is a good option,” the company said. AvocadoCoin’s starting value was set at $1,000 and the company says it is expected to surpass the current value of Bitcoin in the next few years. Bitcoin is currently valued at more than $42,000.
While surpassing Bitcoin’s value is a big reach, the goal it’s aiming to achieve may be an even bigger stretch. Bitcoin is aimed at decentralizing the economy, but AvocadoCoin’s goal is to disrupt agriculture as we currently know it. It wants to help farmers make more sustainable and responsible decisions about their crops and empower them through a designated currency.
The crowdfunded project is aimed specifically at developing renewable and sustainable technologies for the agricultural industry, starting with avocados; the global avocado market is expected to surpass $18 billion by 2025.
“There’s a lot of interest in using blockchain technology to create a more sustainable and equitable planet,” Gonzalo Araújo, founder of GreenCrypto Corporation, said in a statement. “People are looking for ways to use their money to make a difference in the world.”
GreenCrypto says the use of IoT and Agro4.0 technologies is the solution to decrease waste, care for natural resources, and protect the planet. It also says the technology is “essential” to double and improve food production as well as enabling “massive investment” opportunities for anyone in the world to participate.
According to GreenCrypto, Green Gold is powered by the GreenBlocks blockchain Decentralized Ledger Technology (DLT), an advanced Blockchain 4.0 system. It says GreenBlocks uses the only blockchain with Proof of History as consensus, eliminating power-based consensus, and comes with low transaction fees.
“Such a revolutionary system is the need of the hour as the farming sector is still often reliant on decades-old technology and funding sources that are outdated and designed to suppress farmers and deprive them from financial independence,” GreenCrypto says.
It says its “points without borders” approach offers enhanced privacy and instant transactional capability makes it a lucrative investment option.
Metaverse
Earlier this week, the Green Gold Project announced plans to launch agriculture in the Metaverse through a partnership with Landian, which calls itself “a global community in the virtual and physical worlds.”
GreenCrypto says Landian is proposing one of the “easiest, cheapest, and most powerful Metaverse alternatives” in the industry.
“With this alliance, the Green Gold Project will have land within the Landian metaverse earmarked for learning and growing avocados for use inside and outside the metaverse,” the company says.
GreenCrypto says the partnership will be “one of the most powerful value propositions” in a market that it says is “growing in importance every day and is setting a global trend.”
A decentralized but traceable economy could also make the food supply less appealing to cartels because anonymity is much more difficult with digital currency than with cash transactions.
“The Green Gold Project allows to redirect the trillions of dollars that are currently in crypto market capitalization and direct them to solve food production, food security, and world hunger, taking care of the planet and sustainability,” says Araújo.
“Our invitation to the world is to invest in our crypto tokens which improve the lives of humans on earth enjoying the benefits of crypto disruption, profits, capitalization, secondary markets, and decentralized trust,” he says.
“Are you going to invest in Bitcoin that destroys the planet because of the need for energy or in AvocadoCoin, [a] Green Token that helps world hunger and gives you profits from the avocado industry?”
