Of Virtue & Absurdity: Meme coins vs. Charity tokens:
Months in, the saga continues, now with the battle between Virtue and Memes. The DeFi space has seen a massive influx of obscene and borderline psychotically-named meme tokens which are taking the world by storm. Plagued by copycats attempting to clout jump off of each other and things like popular tweets from crypto relevant celebrities such as Elon Musk, Mark Cuban and others, these new tokens, which are often referred to as “rug-pulls” for their money-grabbing attributes and minimal shelf-life, are among the newest and most popular crypto trends. Minted on the Binance Smart Chain and pitted, almost fittingly, against a new breed of tokens taking advantage of the flexibility afforded in the DeFi space: Charity tokens.
Never heard of a charity token?
A charity token allocates a percentage from each transaction and funnels it to various charitable organizations — sometimes those organizations are distinctly laid out in their white paper and sometimes they are voted on by the community.
Some charity tokens are also meme tokens — and some meme tokens became charity tokens. But all charity tokens have taken a stance to shine a more positive light on the crypto space and become a beacon of hope in the otherwise shady and muddled world of altcoins. This presents both a unique transmutationist opportunity to use some of the massive $1.5 Trillion+ dollars that are currently circulating among different crypto projects to shine some light onto an area that could certainly use that money most: charity and charitable initiatives.
Not All Coins are Created Equal — the Dark Side of Memes & Fake Charity Tokens
Though many Meme & Charity coins may appear to take on philanthropic initiatives under the guise of improving various societal problems such as environmental and human rights causes, the vast majority of these projects are simply seeking to capitalize on the good nature of human beings who wish to make a difference with a quick get rich style cash grab. This not only hurts the crypto sectors credibility as a whole, but it vastly undermines the actual projects out there who truly want to make a difference through transparent and philanthropic elements of their project. The crypto-sphere has long been accused of encouraging money laundering, fraudulent and even terrorist related activities due to its lack of regulation and elements of anonymity — and these meme tokens and fake charity tokens sadly only bolster these claims.
The Need for Transparency
One element of cryptocurrency and crypto related projects that are constantly spoken about is the absolute lack of transparency across different aspects be it financial, identity related or even project transparency. Thankfully, many of these projects have easily identifiable “red flags” — many of which relate directly to various forms of transparency.
How to Identify these Red Flags:
The first red flag is the lack of transparency among developers and team members within these fake charity and meme token projects. If a project cannot reveal or “dox” at least a majority of its members, the first question you have to ask yourself is why? What credible team is comprised entirely of a group of unknowns who want you to give them your money and have you trust that it will be directed to the right place, when they can’t even trust you to know their names and see their faces, especially in an already existing bot-heavy industry?
The second red flag is financial ambiguity with no clear road map. The lack of a proper whitepaper combined with a lack of milestones and empty promises to unnamed charities and causes should set of many of your mental alarms when performing proper due diligence on these projects. You want to know the exact Who, What, Where, When, Why & How’s of this project to identify the use of the project’s finances as well as how it plans to develop and expand over time. Going a little deeper into the nature of both the team members as well as the causes they are supporting with historical context is crucial here: Are these people and the causes they claim to support legitimate or do they have a history of fraudulent and shady activities behind them?
The third red flag is the use case (or lack of) of the project. Is this project something that is both innovative and sustainable? It doesn’t necessarily have to be completely innovative but at the very least, it should identify a problem and either attempt to solve it with a new method or approach or, improve on an existing one. If the project has none of these elements and seems to be based entirely on some sort of short term trend or hype alone, it should be avoided at all costs.
Shining Light onto the Darkness — The Positive Side of Charity Tokens: A New Hope
The good news is that there are many real Charity token projects out there such as Charitas ($CHAR), who not only have a transparent plan and team; provide receipts for all of their charitable donations. Charitas finds its name rooted within the latin word for charity “Caritas”. Furthermore, the project is completely community-driven and is developing a diverse eco-system in which every element, regardless of whether it is catered to environmental awareness and protection or social & human rights causes, has charitable donation properties. Charitas has raised over $50,000 USD with just over $35,000 USD donated to various charitable initiatives such as (list favorite ones here) in its first month alone.
These rare gems within the growing meme and charity token culture such as Charitas are the new hope for uniting the goal of transforming money with cryptocurrency and bridging it to the growing wave of social and environmental awareness to help save and improve the current state of the world. This allows transparent charity tokens an opportunity to allocate a piece of the monstrous amount of money flowing into the space worldwide to be directed at improving the world through various charitable initiatives within a multitude of different philanthropic foundations.
More than Just Money: The Compounding of Social Awareness
While the monetary aspect that these charity tokens generate for charity is more than amazing, the awareness element that is tied into the ever-growing crypto community that charity tokens bring towards these issues is an even more valuable component. By constantly talking about social justice, environmental issues and through the overall fundamental intertwining of crypto and charity — we have a promising occasion to re-imagine and reinvent our outlook and approach towards charitable causes as a whole.
Conclusions, Community & Caritas
The strong community aspects tied with the charitable aspects of charity tokens and their meme counterparts presents a strong opportunity for the people to finally come together for charity and the environment as much as they have united under their love for cryptocurrency as a whole. This is the time to get involved and raise your own awareness towards the charitable causes around you by both helping out with your time and with your power to help spread awareness for others to do the same. One thing I loved about the Charitas project was their strong vocalization and embodiment of not just giving to charities but to also BE the charity — a sentiment that is needed now more than ever as the world prepares to face many social and environmental issues that need addressing sooner than later.
