Universal Basic Income Experiment Attracts Support, As GoodDollar's Creative Lead Is Happy To Explain

I work for GoodDollar, a not-for-profit organisation that develops tools for distributing universal basic income (UBI), and at the end of last year, we launched a systems test for a UBI coin and wallet among 500 eToro staff. But when we started the pilot we were just testing all the bits and bytes, stressing the system before a public launch and seeing where we can optimize and debug. Being GoodDollar’s main contributor, eToro not only sponsored the experiment but also allowed us to use their staff as a test group, and together we built a six-month universal basic income experiment.

Launch

We gave 500 eTorians (office lingo) a digital coin, a wallet, and a marketplace to trade in. Each user got to claim a daily income (UBI) of one GoodDollar (G$1.00 = $1.00) and we fed the marketplace with items ranging from G$200–G$900 expecting users to trade up their unwanted items or services towards reaching valued items.

And they did. They were pretty savvy about it, too.

Some baked cakes, some traded second-hand clothes, some gave yoga classes and I spent most of my GoodDollars on a one of a lifetime racing experience in a turbocharged car… but I digress…

Our friends at Paperclip built us a designated marketplace and we used it as an opportunity to proof the wallet experience and to see how the G$ coin could work among holders, setting the stage for the live launch later that year.

Over the six-month universal basic income experiment, we saw 300+ wallet holders claim G$13,000 and they bought and sold goods worth G$306,438. Meaning that among a group of young urban professionals an extra daily income of only $1.00 a day generated a market value worth of over $300,000 dollars over six months.

Land

Now GoodDollar was moving towards a public launch and the beta test / universal basic income experiment was coming to an end.

We sat with eToro’s CEO & Co-Founder Yoni Assia who wanted to donate to the fight against corona but was looking for a way for all eTorians to have a chance to be engaged and take an active part as well.

We decided to conclude the program with a Doing Good With GoodDollars campaign which would allow users to donate all their hard-earned tokens to charities but also test, yet again, their commitment towards social impact.

We selected four local charities with programs related to corona relief including a medical center, a women’s shelter, a meals-on-wheels provider and a doctors support program.

Every GoodDollar donated by users would be matched with 2 US dollars by eToro, and to further the effort, an additional G$200 were airdropped into every active wallet as a stimulus.

Doing Good With GoodDollars managed to raise a total of $102,008 from a group of 300+ people in under ten days:

• Not Alone Hot — Meals For The Needy — $36,830
• Sheba Medical Center — $25,954
• No To Violence — Women’s Shelter — $24,990
• Adopt A Doctor / Kaplan Hospital — $14,234

Out of 300+ wallets, 169 individual donations were made, meaning 56% of wallet holders donated their time and GoodDollars to the effort. In comparison in 2018, 24% of adult Americans donated their time or money towards making a difference.

We also saw that 24 new users registered in those 10 days just so they could be involved in making an impact, so… those 24 people, in effect, raised just under $10,000.

Mission Control

As we like to say: “Do good for yourself while doing good for others.” And I think that sums up the universal basic income experiment spot on. GoodDollar wants to give everyone access to basic financial assets and strives for economic inclusion, as founder Yoni Assia lays out in Cointelegraph’s feature.

We learned a lot from this beta test, not only from a technical standpoint where we got a chance to improve the product, locate the blockers, upgrade the UX and get everything ready for a public launch.

But also from a social standpoint where we saw users claim a daily income, buy and sell goods with that extra income, upgrade their phones, lunches, and skills but when a chance arose to pay that forward, they did.

I am now more confident than ever about GoodDollar’s vision for global UBI and am very excited about our upcoming public launch.

Stay tuned …