Uber co-founder who is also known for disrupting one industry is now allegedly going after gold, fiat currency, and bitcoin. Garrett Camp is behind a newly dubbed cryptocurrency Eco, a decentralized global currency protocol and he is looking towards the world’s top universities to run an established node network.

According to an article in Fortune, he prefers Eco for its idea of “ecosystem, economics, and e-commerce”. Eco is designed to go head to head with bitcoin, gold and fiat money for every day global payment transactions.

Camp said Fortune:

“I REALIZED IT MIGHT BE BETTER TO RELEASE A NEW PROJECT FROM A DIFFERENT PHILOSOPHICAL STANDPOINT WITH COOPERATION FROM A LOT OF UNIVERSITIES, SCIENTISTS, AND RESEARCH INSTITUTES— LIKE THE INTERNET.”

Eco v/s Bitcoin

According to the white paper, Eco slams bitcoin as a “speculative investment” and not a medium of exchange, the second one of which it is trying to achieve. There are 3 key issues that Eco takes up with bitcoin mentioned below–

higher concentration among a handful of holders
energy-intensive mining process
perception of a propensity for fraud
Eco proposes to do the following –

It forms an established network, where universities run nodes” (instead of volunteer miners that run the Bitcoin network)
increase … overall token supply
create … simple web and mobile
The Eco Foundation, a nonprofit organization, is tasked with designing Eco as an international currency that is safer, easier & faster to utilize than hard cash. Eco has several unique characters that separate it from bitcoin, not the least of which is that the latest cryptocurrency is free of charge and they are giving 50% of their total token supply to the early takers.

Similar to Bitcoin, there’s a limited number of Eco being created. But not like bitcoin’s 21 million, Eco set the cap at 1 trillion to make it possible for users to own many Eco tokens. In the meantime, they have advertised Eco as “the digital currency for everyone” and provide what appears to be a wait list to get your share.

Eco is constructing an established network of global universities. It is an approach that seems to get a digital page out of Mark Zuckerberg’s Facebook. This network will help build an evenly distributed and cooperative financial infrastructure in an energy-efficient method.

Eco is not setting up an initial coin offering to raise funds for the project, which is probably a good move in light of the recent crackdown by regulators like the US SEC on ICOs.

Author's Bio: 

Ricky Makan is a venture capitalist and Crypto Enthusiast best known for pioneering the market for Digital Marketing. He is a Co-founder of Unkrypted, a platform which provides the latest news and information that helps understand everything about the ever-evolving world of digital currencies.