WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF
Stablecoins can be underpinned and backed by anything from fiat currencies and gold, and now to Uranium.
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A little while ago I shone a light on the new trend of tokenising gold as more companies used Web 3.0 and tokenisation to tokenise everything and in doing so unlock over $17 Trillion worth of new economic opportunity. Now, to one up gold the so-called Endgame Plan from Maker is evolving quickly – and weirdly. Now, after adding vanilla T-bills and accounts payable to the blockchain, a new proposal is looking to add tokenised uranium.
“Our goal is to democratise ownership of uranium by providing stability value, and easier access to exposure to a commodity that is growing in importance,” reads the proposal penned by Uranium3o8.
The element is growing in popularity of late as various nations either restart their nuclear ambitions in the name of energy or lay out fresh plans to reboot their power grids.
The details are scant, but one would suspect that these tokenized fuel rods would be onboarded to the Maker protocol. Once added, all that DAI floating around the ether could get a nuclear-backed boost from the tokenised uranium.
When reached for comment on how serious this proposal was, a spokesperson for Uranium3o8 told reporters that it is indeed legitimately interested in becoming a DAI backer.
“If they also have interest in this, I am sure we can find a way to make it happen. A lot of work needs to be done for us to get to that point – but we’re in it to win it,” they said.
As for the Maker team, well, anything’s possible for a Decentralised Autonomous Organisation (DAO) right?
MakerGrowth said “this proposal is a contribution from an individual within the MakerDAO community and is currently being assessed by members of the DAO. The Maker forum is open to contributions from anyone in the MakerDAO community.”
The above-mentioned Endgame Plan was whipped up by Maker’s founder Rune Christensen to generate as much revenue for the protocol via yield from real-world assets. This revenue would then, at least per the plans laid out, be converted to Ethereum which could then be cashed out as USD if desired.
With a massive, censorship-resistant treasury, the thinking goes that Maker’s decentralized stablecoin would be immune from government capture. But both ideas – tokenising a volatile element and then using it to back crypto dollars – are kinda nuts.
The first is nuts because, based on the proposal and the project’s marketing materials, it describes real, nuclear-grade uranium. The project also briefly touches on a redemption mechanism to recoup one pound of Uranium backing each token.
When asked on Twitter about the redemption process, the project said that folks who are licensed and “meet the minimum threshold” can have that uranium shipped to their house. And they’re serious … Whoa!
That minimum threshold, by the way, means holding a minimum of 20,000 uranium-backed tokens – which, per Uranium3o8, also represents 20,000 pounds, or 10 tons, of actual uranium.
The Uranium3o8 spokesperson further added that it’s not responsible for the shipping of the live uranium. Instead, they’ve tapped a Canadian mining firm called Madison Metals.
“Anything to do with touching, transporting, or approving delivery of the underlying uranium is executed by them according to industry standard compliance and regulation,” they said.
Some are still unconvinced, though – funnily enough – with another account writing simply: “Feds.”
And the only comment responding to this rather mad proposal is a picture of an FBI agent working at a laptop with his glock placed just next to his work-from-home station.
And as for a stablecoin, adding Uranium as collateral seems… well, volatile. For now thought I’ll be keeping my eye on this weird story and while it is weird, out there, whacky and all kinds of other things you can’t deny that we don’t live in a mad world these days …
