Just When You Thought You’d Heard Everything, Along Comes VeganCoin

This article was authored by Christina Comben and originally posted on CoinCentral.com.

The cryptocurrency market is becoming pretty saturated – filled with everything from bogus projects to life-changing solutions. We’ve seen how cryptocurrency can incentivize people to do incredible things, from fighting crime to trading surplus energy. But just when you thought you’d heard everything, along comes VeganCoin.

While it may sound a little comical at first, the premise behind VeganCoin is actually pretty solid, in a green and ethical kind of way. While oftentimes, the cryptocurrency world seems like a cutthroat place filled with people out for personal gain, the folks at VeganNation are promoting good values instead. Saving the world, among them.

Their VeganCoin identifies itself as a “Cruelty-Free Cryptocurrency,” since veganism is a way of life and not just a diet. A choice for the greater good, not merely self-fulfillment.

Veganism is on the Rise

Veganism is on the rise around the world.

While vegans are certainly a small minority, the number of vegans globally is on the rise. In the United States alone, vegans rose by 600 percent over the last three years, and 350 percent in the UK. Veganism was also a top search trend in Canada in 2017.

People are more conscious of their dietary choices and the effects that they have on the environment. Supermarket chains are seeing a rise in requests for vegan-approved products and are calling on more plant-based food suppliers. This includes large chains like Tesco, Costco, and Walmart.

Whether people decide to live a plant-based diet for their health, for the animals, or to save the planet (meat production places a heavy strain on the environment), they share a common outlook–a healthier lifestyle.

According to The Vegan Society, the processes involved in meat production are one of the key drivers of climate change. Because the animals we feed on need to eat, vast areas of forests are hacked down to fuel animal consumption. This leads to a loss of species and deforestation.

Transportation and methane gas from cows also create a heavy carbon footprint. In Brazil alone, some 5.6 million acres of land is used to feed cattle right now.

The Need for a Vegan Ecosystem

VeganNation issuers of VeganCoin

Making the choice to go vegan in itself isn’t easy, and depending on where you live, it also may be logistically impossible. Even for those living in heavily metropolitan areas, it can be hard to find vegan products and harder to verify the way in which the ingredients were sourced.

Now move away to a small town and your chances of finding vegan products reduce significantly. The selection of vegan-approved products is next to naught in many places, and vegan-friendly restaurants (and people) non-existent. Faced with the prospect of living on lettuce makes an already difficult choice even harder, leading to many people changing their minds.

This is where incentivization through the VeganCoin cryptocurrency can make the difference and bring a global community of vegans together. VeganNation aims to unite vegans around the world who share common values, using the VeganCoin to empower the community.

This will make being a vegan much easier to do and enable ingredients to be validated at every stage of the supply chain. Thanks to the blockchain transparency, all products purchased with VeganCoin meet standards of ethicality.

Consumers can easily trace the ingredients all the way to the source, or simply buy products with confidence. They no longer need to worry about the integrity of their purchase. They’ll know that buying with VeganCoin is an ecologically-sound decision.

VeganCoin – A System with Three Components

An e-Commerce Platform

Through the VeganNation ecosystem, using the VeganCoin, consumers can purchase vegan-friendly products. They can either trade among themselves directly, or with small business owners, farmers, and different types of service providers (such as dietitians and nutritionists).

A Support System

Through user-generated content on the VeganNation platform, users can share recipes, pain points, ideas, and tips. They can offer support and create a profile that alerts them to the nearest members and verified vegan sellers near them, connecting through the social platform.

A Food Sharing Platform

“We want to bring the sharing economy to the vegan community,” states the VeganNation green paper. Sounds rather nice, but how does it work? It seems that even vegans need incentivizing to share with others.

Through a tokenized reward system, VeganNation plans to enable individuals and households to create and share vegan meals through their VeganPoint meal sharing platform.

One of the barriers to living a fully vegan lifestyle is the high price of products available. By food sharing, they can bring prices down, enabling people to follow a vegan diet more easily, even when they live far from urbanized areas.

The food sharing concept further brings people together, growing the vegan community, and encouraging micro businesses to bloom.

With the presale on the horizon, it’s not possible to verify the popularity or success of the VeganCoin just yet, although VeganNation is enlisting the support of some pretty heavyweight partners, including global accounting firm, EY.

So, if you thought you’d seen every idea to come out of the cryptocurrency community, along came VeganCoin to prove that cryptocurrency innovation is limited only by our imaginations.