ORANJESTAD – New initiatives give energy, but you need to understand them to be willing to participate. Aruba Today had the pleasure to interview the people of ArubaCoin, out of curiosity about the new cryptocurrency.
What is ArubaCoin and how does it work?
“ArubaCoin is a decentralized social cryptocurrency, there is no central authority. It’s an ERC-20 on the ethereum block chain. The benefit of that is, ArubaCoin can be sent and received on any ethereum wallet. Transaction fees are paid in ether and it is supported by popular hardware wallets Legder and Trezor. You control your wealth by controlling the private key, which you can backup numerous ways and multiple times. It’s an open source and fully auditable on the block chain. Anybody and everybody can contribute.”
It’s also programmable money so there are allot of use-cases, ArubaCoin could have numerous purposes:
1) means of cheap and instant exchange without any 3rd party involved
2) e-commerce and online platforms instant payments without the risk of charge-backs
3) a censorship resistant scarce digital asset
4) financial sovereignty
5) automated settlement layer
Its a new technology that many still don’t understand nor need to. Many don’t understand what TCP/IP is but you use it every day, it’s called the internet. Eventually the user-experiences will be seamless and you won’t know you are using cryptocurrency in the backend of an application. Many are skeptical of Bitcoin or ArubaCoin which is very normal if you don’t fully understand the fundamentals. Cryptocurrency was created out of necessity to solve a problem.
“ArubaCoin did 2 rounds of free Airdrops to the Aruban Community where hundreds of participants received free 200 ArubaCoin (at today’s market price $2.30 = $460) and 50 ArubaCoin airdrops current total value of $115. This is how we wanted to reach broad distribution for the local Aruban community. And in this way create a low barrier of entry for the rest of the community.”
Who started ArubaCoin and with what purpose?
“ArubaCoin has the same mystique that Bitcoin has, nobody knows who the creators of the genesis block are, which eventually doesn’t matter. It’s a grassroots project, it’s been released for the public. The community has grown substantially, from bitcoin advocates to Aruban cryptocurrency community members. The same as Satoshi Nakamoto left bitcoin to the community members, this happened to ArubaCoin also. The purpose is to solve a problem and have an alternative. A social experiment just like bitcoin.”
What is your goal with Arubacoin?
“The goal of the ArubaCoin community in general is to have a wide adoption and active community and slowly but surely grow the eco-system. Sustainability is priority. An easy and instant means of exchange. Physically bringing cash is costly and timely, while local bank transfers takes 2 days.”
How many and which companies work with ArubaCoin so far?
Currently in Aruba there are 16 businesses accepting ArubaCoin:
Linda’s Dutch Pancakes
Aruba E-Bike Tours
Casalina Garden Apartments
New Image Spa Aruba @ Barcelo Hotel
Alfie’s Burger joint & Bar
Mi Desayuno Restaurant
Cunucu 297
Tennis School Aruba Palm Beach
ArubaCanoe water activities & paddle school
Motivami
Dog Hotel Aruba
Gomes Air-conditioning & services
InvenTech Aruba
Best Buy Family Store
Its listed on 2 exchanges: EtherDelta exchange and ForkDelta exchange. And listed on CoinMarketWatch.com for market cap and price ticker, market indicators. GetDelta app also for price ticker.
Where can people find information?
“You can find more information at www.arubacoin.org and follow our Facebook community page or telegram group.”
Do you have cooperation with other digital currency?
“The community members and developers are community members of bitcoin and other coins like zcoin and ethereum, so yes we have collaborations with broad spectrum of prominent developers and community members in the space.”
What can you say about the comments that digital currency comes with high energy costs?
“High energy cost will depend on which algorithm/mining hardware your talking about (asic). The high energy cost is based on the countries where nobody mines because it would be unprofitable. The POW (proof of work) algorithm which bitcoin is working on miners are using green cheap energy where there is excess electricity, like Iceland and China. ArubaCoin is built on ethereum and does not use the sha-256 algorithm that bitcoin uses. And soon the protocol should be switching to PoS which is more energy efficient.”
Why would people choose for digital currency? How would tourists benefit from this?
“Most adoption it’s fueled by necessity, if it solves a problem there will be users and growth. And we see many opportunities and use-cases that can be used with it, that otherwise could not be accomplished. We are focused on the local community and eco-system, tourist are not the priority. Of course you have Aruban community members that live abroad, those are already participating in ArubaCoin, they also have a unique use-case because they could send $10 from Europe instantly and the received can pay their bill instantly, within minutes.
ArubaCoin is very new, we do not recommend anybody to take this as an investment advice. Bitcoin, ArubaCoin or any cryptocurrency can be HIGHLY volatile, we do not recommend anybody buying cryptocurrency without doing due diligence how to use it. If you lose your private key or password or don’t properly back it up, nobody can retrieve those coins.”
