The Year Crypto Cities Arrived
What would you do, if you needed to build the civilization from scratch?
Here, in our blog, we continue telling the stories about cryptocurrencies, their impact on the world around us and their potential to make a difference in our lives. We are developing the Noah Project and plan to roll out the Noah City in Horizon Manila and the Noah Resort on the picturesque beaches of the Philippines, where visitors will be able to transact both in crypto and fiat. Those who use Noah Coin will enjoy significant discounts.
Where do we come from?
Bitcoin was created in 2009 and it became the first decentralized virtual currency. It is based on the distributed ledger technology, which helps to eliminate the need for intermediaries and prevent any fraud in the system by sharing the history log of all transactions across the network of computers and disabling anyone from tampering with the data.
Fast-forwarding to 2018, we see that the world is going through significant changes, while the Internet, social media and digitization are having a significant impact on all sides of our lives. Blockchain starts to bring first changes in various industries, such as finance, banking, healthcare, shipments, sports and many others. One good example of such trend is the benefits that crypto can bring to remittances, making them faster and cheaper.
Easier to Build from Scratch
We are seeing various groups of visionaries and enthusiasts come together to implement the new concepts, powered by blockchain and cryptocurrencies.
One of such examples is the Crypto City that is being established in San Juan, Puerto Rico. The new generation of cryptocurrency holders who have seen their assets skyrocket in value is actively seeking to move to warmer pastures and sidestep stifling hustle and bustle of modern cities. They say that they come with innovations in heart, wishing to help Puerto Rico move past the problems it faces.
The series of catastrophic events in Puerto Rico coincided with a huge growth in cryptocurrency prices, making the government and locals in San Juan more open to welcoming the new “missionaries” to the city and helping them to bring their grand vision to life.
As of this moment, this movement to build a crypto city is only gathering steam and it’s not clear yet what to take from it. However, Puerto Rico, which took a hit from hurricane Maria in 2017, could win from the dawning crypto-revolution.
As we know, cryptocurrencies can bring big benefits to those countries which suffer most from social, environmental or financial problems. The virtual currencies enable fast money transfers since they don’t need banks as intermediaries. They also cut costs for remittances which usually make up a big part of income for people living in such regions.
Eternal Playground for Boys
The group of innovators, being led by Brock Pierce, a billionaire, the director of the Bitcoin Foundation and one of the founders of EOS, decided to create the whole city from scratch. According to the vision, all the facets of business and governance here will be digitized and put on blockchain.
Initially, the group decided to name the city as “Puertopia”, but after finding out that in Latin it meant something like “eternal playground for boys”, the crypto enthusiasts shifted to “Sol”. But, nevertheless the name-changing, the true nature of this “project” is clear — it’s about innovations and seeing how latest technologies can be used to bring benefits to real lives of people and local economies.
Going ashore in the Philippines
The Philippines has a unique convergence of the two trends with low levels of banking services penetration and a huge popularity of smartphones, which opens the way to propel financial inclusion by sidestepping the banks and doing business from your phone.
The Philippines is characterized by the following three trends: extremely high growth rates (up to 6% per year), low penetration of banking services and high penetration of smartphones. It is expected that the young population here will be happy to transact in crypto via their smartphones.
Under the auspices of the Noah Project, we are planning to establish the Noah City in Horizon Manila and the Noah Resort, which will lay on some of the world’s best beaches and offer various leisure and sports activities. Uniquely, visitors of the City and the resort will able to use Noah Coins. In particular, if they transact in the project’s native token Noah Coin, they will win from discounts, cash-backs and loyalty programs.
