#ReFiSummer: The Birth of a Trillion-Dollar Economy
Celo Community,
Happy Earth Day 2022.
As many of you know, the community launched Celo mainnet on Earth Day two years ago. This was not a coincidence, but a purposeful commitment to the importance of building a financial system with the objective to regenerate our planet.
From the very first draft of the Celo whitepaper in 2017, the concept of natural capital-backed currencies, inspired by Charles Eisenstein’s Sacred Economics, was a fundamental and important design choice. At that point, the idea of designing and issuing digital currencies on a sustainable blockchain, and of creating a liquid, on-chain market for natural assets, seemed radical. When mainnet launched, the community began to look into bringing natural assets, such as rainforests, on-chain in a meaningful way. The Celo Climate Collective was born from this work, and launched last year. The Climate Collective is a mission-aligned group of Web3 projects, organizations, advisors, and advocates dedicated to reversing climate change by accelerating ecosystem efforts to bring natural assets to the Celo Reserve.
Over the past year, as we’ve worked alongside incredible climate partners in our ecosystem, including Toucan, Flow Carbon and Moss — leaders in bringing carbon offsets and natural assets on-chain — it’s become clear that we can soon realize that big vision of a rich, regenerative financial system with natural assets at its heart.
In my opinion, Earth Day 2022 marks the birth of a new economy — the regenerative economy. We’ve been talking about regenerative finance (ReFi) for a while, but it’s never felt more necessary and imminent than it does today.
ReFi is an awakening of a trillion-dollar economy. Here’s why.
Carbon offsets — the tip of the ReFi iceberg — already represent a billion-dollar market, and our own research forecasts that the demand for carbon offsets will increase from 1.7 billion tonnes in cumulative demand over the last 16 years to between 1.1 and 3.6 billion tonnes per year by 2050. At current prices, that equates to tens of billions of dollars. It’s easy to see a new trillion-dollar asset class in the making when you add in new on-chain applications such as NFTs or Celo’s stablecoins, which are backed in part by natural-capital assets.
The ReFi movement can create the profound systemic change needed to not just reverse the climate crisis and restore the health of the planet, but also greatly improve the health of our communities and empower individuals.
If you attended Celo Connect earlier this month, you probably met some of the founders working on the building blocks and applications of this new regenerative economy.
The conference was jam-packed and incredibly energizing. People from all over the world shared their ideas and engaged in candid, meaningful dialogues about Celo’s mission and our collective and individual wins and challenges. Rewarding on many levels, it proved the value of collaboration and demonstrated that we should meet with more frequency and intention — not just at conferences. We must take advantage of opportunities to build in public and to become richer through community participation. To that end, please consider joining us on our weekly Community Calls on Discord, and our monthly all-hands, Kuneco.
We’ve grown considerably in two years, yet one truth has remained constant: the Celo community is made up of the most talented, inspiring, mission-driven humans I’ve ever encountered. I feel honored to build beside you and I have never felt more bullish about our community than I do today.
#ReFiSummer starts now.
Rene Reinsberg
PS: If you’re planning to attend EthCC in Paris, please contact us about programming and sponsorship opportunities at the Celo Salon.
