How Send fights cronyism and economic uncertainty
Independence from the legacy financial system and decentralization sound like empty slogans until they become matters of life and death. For some, quite literally.
Send Protocol is not merely a cryptocurrency or blockchain business — it is a vehicle for people to fight government corruption and mismanagement and defend their livelihoods against the odds.
How much do you pay for a coffee latte today? If you live in a relatively developed country, $2.50 should buy you a decent cup to kickstart your day. Now imagine paying $600 (that is six hundred US dollars) for the same coffee a year from now, while your salary remains the same.
Welcome to Venezuela.
It’s hard for an outsider to know exactly how bad the situation is in Venezuela. The government has stopped publishing inflation figures, and the unofficial estimates range between 5,000–25,000%. The truth is, the numbers don’t matter that much. The situation on the ground is terrible, and people are suffering, unable to afford daily necessities, not to mention healthcare and medication. The country’s banks are barely functional, their balance books destroyed and their ATMs empty.
The core of the Send team comes from Latin America, a place we love and call home. Political and financial troubles during the last few decades have made us resourceful. In Venezuela, people are working particularly hard to find creative ways to overcome what has become a daily struggle.
In the last few years, more than 1.5M people or about 5 percent of the population left the country to find work elsewhere in Latin America, the US or Europe, and many more still living within the country consider emigration. In 2017, migrant workers sent more than $1.1 billion US Dollars back to Venezuela.
The dysfunctional banking system and strict government currency controls make it very difficult for Venezuelans to receive these often life-saving transfers. Many cross the border to neighboring Colombia or Brazil to queue half a day at a Western Union branch. Many others resort to black market channels instead.
This is what we aim to change with the Send Protocol and WeSend, our first distributed app built on top of the Send Token (SDT).
Send is fast and easy to use. A Venezuelan working in Colombia can purchase SDT from any of the sellers in the WeSend platform, using virtually any payment method including bank transfer, card payment, PayPal or even WeChat Pay.
PuntoRed provides widespread coverage for WeSend users in Colombia, with 70,000 points of payment offering easy access to SDT tokens, among other financial services like sim cards, top-ups and cable or internet payments.
In express mode, recipients receive their funds in the last mile within minutes, without ever needing to know that SDT tokens were involved in the transaction. In normal mode, a recipient receives her SDT tokens to her WeSend wallet instantly and can consult the WeSend app to find the closest point of payment to convert her SDT tokens to Bolivares.
Send is stable. After initial price formation, the price of 1 SDT will maintain a stable rate in USD throughout a calendar week (Monday 12 a.m — Sunday 11:59 p.m. EST). Each new consensus period, a new reference price is calculated based on transaction volume and network liquidity. This not only takes crypto volatility out of the equation for confident transactions, but also fights inflation to serve as a reliable store of value over time.
Send is a solution for the people, free from government and capital controls. SDT tokens can’t be seized, confiscated at the border or devalued by a central bank. Transactions using SDT tokens are peer-to-peer, secured by blockchain technology, and available for stable use within the Send Consensus Network.
Send, ultimately, can be the difference between vulnerability and self-reliance for millions of Venezuelans, and tens of millions of people living in other countries plagued by government instability, inadequate access to financial services, devaluation, or runaway inflation.
This is a goal worth fighting for.
Our whitelist is open with only 2,000 available slots. The public presale price of 1 SDT is $0.14, representing a 30% discount over the $0.20 starting distribution price.
You can find further information about the Send Protocol at www.sendprotocol.com.
