Garrett Camp, the co-founder of ride-hailing service Uber, is working to launch his own brand of cryptocurrency.
Camp’s proposed cryptocurrency project, which he has been researching for half a year now, will be called “Eco.”
His grand vision for Eco is to create an affordable, borderless form of digital currency with instantaneous and effortless transactional features.
If Camp can reach the initial coin offering phase of his endeavor, more than 1 trillion Eco tokens will be issued.
Half of the first trillion Eco tokens will be issued to the first 1 billion people who sign up to the project.
The rest will be divided among universities, researchers, advisors and investors.
Camp got the idea to create his own digital currency after an “eye opening” trip to Africa, as well as several underwhelming experiences speculating and investing in existing cryptocurrencies.
Camp says he invested in Bitcoin and Ethereum cryptocurrencies for the first time via the online exchange Coinbase in May 2017.
Camp was disappointed by the unpredictable volatility of cryptocurrencies and how they seemed to benefit only in-the-know speculators and investors.
“The more research I did, the more I was not really wanting to buy a large amount of any one of them,” Camp says.
“I realized it might be better to release a new project from a different philosophical standpoint with cooperation from a lot of universities, scientists, and research institutes — like the Internet.”
Future of cryptocurrency
Camp claims his Eco cryptocurrency will be more efficient than existing cryptocurrencies.
“Eco seeks to create the most usable digital currency platform to date, offering users an alternative to bitcoin, gold and fiat currency at Eco.com,” states his white paper.
“New payment systems are needed which are not controlled by a central institution, and provide better user experiences using mobile devices.”
Most existing cryptocurrencies, such as Bitcoin, are mainly used for trading value in speculation.
Meanwhile, it remains difficult and time consuming to use most cryptocurrencies as actual currency, due to processing times.
Camp says that the Eco cryptocurrency project is still in the early design stages of development.
He will spend more than $10 million dollars of his own money to initially fund the project as he seeks additional funds.
Camp adds that he will also invite authorities in fields such as economics, government, policymaking, technology and design to take part in virtual brainstorming sessions on the operational functions of the new cryptocurrency.
Camp employed such virtual brainstorming sessions during the creation of Uber, the online taxi app he co-founded in 2009.
He expects to launch the Eco project in some preliminary form in late 2018.
