Goats, Blockchain and the Future of Money | Fariel Salahuddin | TED

Hi, my name is Fariel,

but back home,

I am also called the goat lady.

And today I will be sharing the story of how that came to be about.

In 2015,

I visited a small, remote village in Pakistan

called Pathan Goth.

The residents of Pathan Goth

were living without access to basic facilities

such as water and electricity.

The community was bussing water two hours from Karachi.

This made their water so expensive

that their livestock went without water every other day.

Bathing and laundry was a luxury.

The solution was simple:

a solar water pump.

But that would cost $10,000.

And for a community

where the average household earned

just about $70 a month,

this was beyond their affordability.

As I sat there thinking about this issue,

the solution literally walked in front of me.

A herd of more than 100 goats crossed my path.

And I thought to myself,

that is a lot of goats.

(Laughter)

I took a chance and asked the village elder:

Would they consider paying me for their pump in goats?

He agreed,

and that is how Pathan Goth got its pump

and I became the proud owner of 40 goats.

(Applause)

A few months down the line,

the Muslim festival of Eid came around.

During Eid, livestock is offered

to honor Abraham’s willingness to sacrifice Isaac.

And much like shopping before Christmas,

the demand for goats goes up,

and the price skyrockets.

I remembered my goats

and decided to put up a post on Facebook

asking my friends and family to buy their Eid goat from me that year.

Within a week I sold all my goats.

And even after paying for a team to do transport and manage them,

I more than recovered the cost of the pump.

This experience made me question the idea of money

and how it has changed and evolved for us.

I found that in 2500 BC,

Mesopotamia,

Sumerians used measured quantity of barley as money.

But as the trading circle grew beyond one village,

money's key characteristics changed and evolved.

Money not only needed to reliably store value

but also be easy to convert

and easy to transport.

That is when we --

civilization --

moved towards coin and paper money.

But coin and paper money get value

only when they’re validated by an external authority,

such as God, crown or the central bank.

Technology today enables us

to bypass the need for this central authority.

Today, the value of any asset can be transferred

from one person to another

using blockchain.

Any asset can now be tokenized,

digitized

and traded.

So technology is not only disrupting the need

for a financial intermediary

in mainstream economy

but also has the potential

to disrupt and democratize economic power

in more rural economies.

By removing the need for inefficient and expensive intermediaries,

small farmers can derive greater value

from what they grow and raise.

Livestock is very abundant in these communities.

Farmers literally use their goats and cows

as ATM machines

and as saving instruments.

They will sell an animal when they need cash,

such as to buy fodder for the rest of the herd,

to buy groceries for their home

or for weddings and health emergencies.

But these communities have never been able

to use their goats and cows

for larger, more productive assets ...

until now.

Our farmers are able to convert 15 goats into a solar water pump.

Previously,

these communities would rely on

or wait for an NGO,

a charity

or the government to take notice

and give them what they needed.

Now they are using their own resources

to fulfill their own needs when they need it.

This is self-reliance.

(Applause and cheers)

So how have we enabled the use of goats

as a reliable form of currency?

Right now, we we work with farmers through physical barter.

At the time of the solar installation,

we take possession of the goats.

We then sell these goats as meat to grocery chains

and through our own retail brand.

Every goat that we receive is then recorded,

as its unique ID --

its key characteristics such as its sex,

its age,

its weight

and even its number of teeth are taken into account.

And then using these,

we assign each goat a dollar or a rupee value,

essentially tokenizing a goat.

We have already worked with 45 communities,

enabling more than 6,000 farmers

to convert their goats into water and electricity.

(Applause)

We are now planning to add smartphones,

tractors

and other equipment.

My hope is that we can create a more inclusive economic system

where any person

or any community can use what they grow and raise as money.

Where a farmer, a small farmer

can use, wherever he is,

whether it’s Pakistan, Nepal, Somalia,

can use a digitized goat to pay for her kid’s school fees,

a tractor

or a smartphone.

This future isn't quite here yet,

but I hope using goats as money gets us closer.

Thank you.

(Applause and cheers)