Uber’s Garrett Camp gets into cryptocurrency game with ‘Eco’

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Everyone else is doing it, so why not? Uber co-founder Garrett Camp plans on launching his own cryptocurrency called Eco. The move comes from Camp’s disdain of how other coins like legacy Bitcoin (BTC) and Ethereum are operating.

According to Camp, Eco will be bionic compared to current coins. It will be faster and more energy efficient, but it won’t be fully anonymous. All transactions will have to be conducted on approved networks. Camp plans on issuing 1 trillion tokens without external fundraising activity. He, along with some of his venture fund partners, will push $10 million into the currency to get things going. Out of the 1 trillion tokens, 30% will go to his partners and advisors, 20% to universities and the rest to the first billion users to sign up.

According to the digital currency’s website, “Eco is designing a global currency protocol, an open source platform that is not controlled by any single individual, organization or nation. Eco aims to create a verified network of global universities and reputable organizations to help design, build and operate an evenly distributed and cooperative financial infrastructure.”

Camp and his partners feel that cryptocurrencies are being suppressed by their complex nature and scalability, and the only way to overcome these obstacles is by offering an alternative solution that preserves a decentralized design. Eco is purported to offer stability comparable to assets like gold or the US dollar, while scaling to billions of users.

The Eco network will use distributed nodes maintained by verified organizations that share a collective incentive to maintain the network. It will focus on alliances with universities to build the Eco platform and to leverage the expertise of the academic institutions. The coin’s Eco Foundation will verify the identity of the initial nodes in order to build the primary network across a wide-ranging geographic map. It will begin with a few hundred nodes installed in more than 50 countries, and then expand as the cryptocurrency’s growth dictates.

The Eco Foundation is a non-profit organization that is creating the open-source financial system. Its mission is to create a global currency that is distributed evenly and which is highly powerful. The foundation will oversee the development of the Eco protocol, and continue to provide transparent administration of, and improvements in, the platform.