ZrCoin — the worl’d first commodity-backed blockchain option

The decentralisation of the global economy starts here

ZrCoin’s ICO will fund the production of a key industrial commodity using brand new technologies. But more than that, we’re leveraging Waves’ cutting-edge fintech tools to do something that has never been done before, creating a new kind of financial instrument that will trade freely on exchanges around the world.

ZrCoin is built on new green technologies, developed by industrial experts, that will enable us to recover zirconium dioxide from the wastes produced by ceramics manufacturers. The result will be more energy efficient, cleaner and of higher quality than the alternative — extracting it from natural resources.

This in itself sets the project apart from anything else on the market. We’ve spent several years and over a million dollars researching and testing the technology, and now we’re ready to deploy it to produce high-quality ZrO2. For various reasons (explained in different articles and interviews), we’ve decided to launch our enterprise via a crowdfund, creating a token on the blockchain.

Commodity-backed tokens

ZrCoin will create an entirely new kind of financial instrument: an option for a commodity, hosted on the Waves blockchain.

Options are widely used in industry, and in essence are quite straightforward. They offer the opportunity to buy or sell a particular commodity or security at a given price, at some point in the future. For example, a farmer might purchase an option to sell next summer’s wheat at the current market price, as a form of insurance against the price falling in the meantime. (If the price rises, he does not have to exercise his option.)

Options exist for all kinds of commodities, from wheat to gold, and for stocks and shares. Whilst they are used by industry to ensure the acquisition of raw materials at a known price, there is also an active secondary market for them. Traders use them as speculative vehicles.

ZrCoin is doing something similar. We are selling tokens that represent the option to take possession of 1kg synthetic ZrO2 — the product we will manufacture for industrial use. Once we are up and running, this product will sell for $2,800 per tonne, so each ZrCoin has a theoretical value of $2.80. We will sell the options at a discount to this at ICO, starting at $1.40.

Decentralised economy

By creating an option on the blockchain, backed by production of ZrO2, ZrCoin will make it possible to trade a real commodity in a fully decentralised way. Anyone, anywhere in the world can buy it, so long as they have an internet connection and the ability to deposit funds into the Waves client (using bitcoin via exchanges, or even with a credit card). Moreover, the barriers of scale that exist in the traditional financial system aren’t a problem with the blockchain. There is no minimum purchase, and no flat fee for brokerage. It would be possible to buy a single ZrCoin, or even less, without the associated costs being prohibitive.

In the near future, we expect many such financial instruments to arise on the blockchain. People will be able to trade them directly, with complete freedom — any amount of any commodity, trading directly against any other, on Waves’ DEX. Sell 5kg of zirconium for gold. Trade USD for silver-backed tokens. Suddenly it will become possible to create diverse portfolios efficiently, even using ZrCoin and other tokens as forms of commodity money. The future is starting to look very interesting, and we’re glad to be blazing a trail there.

For more information or to register for updates, visit www.ZrCoin.io.