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In episode 169, we’re excited to welcome Jose Santiago Gomez Piedrahita, CEO of Alternun, a ReFi project that’s revolutionizing the gold industry through “Digital Gold Mining”. We dive into the challenges of traditional gold mining, explore how Alternun is leveraging blockchain to decentralize and democratize investment opportunities in gold, and discuss how they’re using liquidity pools and tokenization to fund local environmental initiatives.

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Key Takeaways

• Gold mining has significant environmental impacts, including the destruction of habitats and the release of significant carbon emissions, yet 93% of extracted gold is stored in vaults rather than utilized. This raises the question: why continue mining this precious resource and destroying environments only to sequester it away? This is the problem underlying Alternun’s Digital Mining approach.
• Blockchain is essential in building a Digital Mining platform because it brings greater transparency, ensuring there is no double counting of tokens, while also democratizing access to gold investment opportunities through tokenization.
• Alternun decided to build on the Stellar Blockchain due to the low costs, fast transaction times, on-ramps and off-ramps, and the ability to charge small fees on transactions as a revenue generation tool. They also have a good grants program which has been helpful to Alternun’s startup.

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Follow Santiago and Alternun

Twitter - Santiago

LinkedIn - Santiago

Twitter - Alternun

Telegram

Linktree

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Episode Time Stamps:

02:15 - What was your “Ah hah” moment that first got you excited about cryptocurrency/web3?

03:35 - Today’s conversation is going to focus on Gold. To lay the groundwork for our conversation, can you please share some of the challenges that exist in traditional gold mining?

08:55 - To start things off, can you please give listeners an intro to the mission of Alternun?

16:20 - How do you make sure to involve the local community in your work?

18:00 - How do you determine the number of tokens that are released per site? How do you assign a price to the tokens?

24:40 - 50% of funds go to projects developing an environmental surplus – tell me more about some of the projects you have supported.

29:40 - Tell me more about the web3 builders community in Colombia.

32:10 - What are some of the benefits of building on blockchain vs. traditional tech stacks?

35:55 - What data is included in each token?

37:20 - What’s the best way for listeners to get in touch and learn more about Alternun?

39:20 - Tell me more about the Stellar Blockchain and why you decided to deploy there.

41:35 - To wrap things up, if you could name one thing that excites you most about the social impact potential of web3, what would it be and why?

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