We’ve been chatting with Carlos Baeza Negroni for a little while now. He’s creating a stablecoin called Copihue based on the currency (the Peso) of his home country, Chile; we thought we’d ask him a few questions. We’re glad we did.
These answers from Carlos are lightly edited for flow; he already speaks more languages than yours truly, so he scores serious points for that.
What got you started in crypto?
CBN: When the pandemic situation began to spread across the country, I realized that many people will start to work from home, then I had an idea to monetize (somehow) the idle capacity from all those computers. Because they have to be on all day long, and individuals aren’t attending to them all the time (idle capacity), this will cause a rise in their electric bills; but if in exchange we can generate revenue for being idle, it could possibly be a very interesting business niche. Then I met “Bitcoin Family” Masternodes.
Why a stablecoin, and why Chile?
CBN: A stablecoin for the Chilean economy would be a significant reservoir of value, because we have a very stable economy and price fluctuations wouldn’t much affect the pegged price for the token. Also we are working in a “stake and governance” system which is needed to keep the price peg (like DAI and MKR), but in this case it will be Copihue (stable) and Condor (governance) respectively.
Also we believe this will incentivize local commerce to adopt the technology, bringing a more friendly and local communication channel to all the interested in participating, accepting and implementing crypto payments (smart contracts) on their site (our team is very proficient in Fintech and e-commerce/payments integrations).
What have you seen in DeFi and in crypto that shows promise, and what would you change about the whole token universe?
CBN: Well, as I stated in the beginning, I’ve just arrived in the industry (after quite a bit of time in technology), and I am still managing to make a proper and mature opinion about all the solutions and protocols out there. But, this space is entirely awesome, and I specifically could say that something that caught my attention is Tendermint as a core technology (they power Cosmos). I would love to make a custom blockchain with some PoS (proof of stake) consensus to achieve my vision. People could have their node on theirs idle PC, and PoS systems don’t require much computation power.
About what I would change, I don’t know yet, but we definitely could enhance the end user accessibility, bringing more tools like Metamask to empower their experience with different blockchains (like adding built-in networks for xDai and BNB, in that way the user don’t have to add custom RPC networks; that’s too “fishy”). And of course mobile adoption, we need to build more mobile phone-ready applications to interact with natively (always aiming for user experience and conformity, you’re my customer, I have to treat you like so).
What needs to change specifically in South America to get widespread crypto adoption?
CBN: I believe there’s a great labor been done right now, I love to say that in many protocol servers they are implementing Spanish-dedicated channels for the community, also there are many campaigns to get people on board from this part of the globe (in fact, you can see that the next Devcon will be in Bogotá Colombia).
Final thoughts?
CBN: We are building an elaborate stablecoin for our local economic system, in a competition that gathers more than 700 of the brightest minds from all around the world. We know that the stakes are very high, and, to be realistic, we don’t pretend nor expect to win any prize this time, but we are already running with the best, and that makes us feel that we won already.
Editor’s Notes: for more information about Carlos and his project, here are some links:
Site: https://copihue.financial
Hackathon’s Team Profile: https://hack.ethglobal.co/showcase/copihue-chilean-pegged-stablecoin-rec6Gp5xnjJlyiai5
Spanish Telegram: https://t.me/spore_engineering
English Telegram: https://t.me/copihue_financial
Twitter:https://twitter.com/copihue
Medium: https://medium.com/@copihue_financial
Trello: https://trello.com/b/HXBzyV84/ethglobal-ethonline-hackathon-2020