The NFT went crazy in 2021, with sales skyrocketing to $ 25 billion and Dallas software developers using cash grabs to wipe out millions of low-income households’ debt.
“People were making stupid amounts of money in this space,” said Joshua Lapidus, a day laborer at Denver-based tech company Opolis, for health benefits and independent worker salaries. We support the management of.
The Medical Debt Project was formed last fall in a way that much is done in crypto space through group chat that Rapidas started with a blockchain expert he knows. They landed on toilet paper, a unique theme of irreplaceable tokens. About 70% of the money goes to charity.
“We were joking about how bad the landscape was, people selling something to make money,” Rapidas said. “And we thought we should get people to buy ours and donate to charity.”
The project, called Rainbow Rolls, launched in October, sells 10,000 toilet paper NFTs. The limit was then lowered to 1,000 rolls, but the week after reaching 1,000 rolls, more rolls were sold. So far, about 855 rolls have been purchased by word of mouth, the price of which depends on the price of Ethereum.
Rainbow Rolls will donate 20% of its sales, or $ 91,000, to New York-based RIP Medical Debt, which will raise more than $ 7 million in medical debt by purchasing debt from its bundled portfolio. I wiped it out. According to the website, on average, $ 100 in medical debt is allowed for every $ 1 given to nonprofits.
The project also donated 16.5% of the funding to Gitcoin. It helped fund community projects in blockchain technology-led Web 3 spaces, with an additional 16.5% donated to Giveth, which funds socially beneficial projects.
“People who bought bread rolls didn’t care about the art itself,” said Michael Lewellen, Protocol Security Advisor at OpenZeppelin, based in Walnut, Calif., An open source library for smart contract development.
“It was to influence someone’s life in a meaningful way, for the same reason you donate to a charity,” Ruwellen said.
Founded in 2014 by two former debt collection executives, RIP Medical Debt uses data analysis to help households whose income is less than twice the federal poverty level guidelines, or medical care that accounts for at least 5% of total income. The purpose is to help households with debt.
Low-income families are often unable to pay their medical debt, so hospitals and debt collectors are keen to sell their debt for penny in dollars on RIP medical debt.
Scott Patton, Development Director of RIP Medical Debt, said the donations from Rainbow Rolls were large given that the average gift to RIP Medical Debt was less than $ 300.
“I think it touched people’s hearts when they got a serious illness, because it harms not only your body but also your financial existence,” Patton said. “Everyone in America knows that with insurance and a good life, you may be a little isolated, but still vulnerable.”
Patton said the state has different amounts of medical debt that can be purchased under its law and statutes, regardless of whether the hospital sells the debt or how available the secondary market is.
He said Texas is a state that always has a lot of debt.
RIP Medical Debt also reviews the hospital’s charity care policy to help prevent more debt from being incurred.
Criticism
Like other new trends, NFTs have critics. Some criticize their relationship with RIP Medical Debt. The main issue seemed to be the energy associated with NFT transactions.
Gavin Nicholson of the Legislative Yuan, Rainbow Rolls, who works for Karl Sherman in Desoto, said these concerns were valid, but probably misguided.
“There is nothing wrong with the NFT itself,” he said. “The question is what is empowering them, but no one complains about buying a new computer because it’s worth it.”
The Ethereum community has long recognized the need to move away from the current model due to its high energy usage. Ethereum 2.0 was launched in June, and experts say it can reduce energy consumption by 99%.
“It’s a bit weird because the rainbow rolls reached an audience that wasn’t normally reachable and could care about important issues they didn’t normally know about,” Nicholson said. “We brought them problems and solutions.”
RIP Medical Debt was also surprised by the criticism, Patton said, saying that some objections did not seem to have been fully investigated.
“Rejecting donations to forgive medical debt does not help to challenge the NFT,” he said. “You have those concerns, you can investigate them and come up with a solution.”
Patton also said that there are bad actors in every space.
“We are pleased to work with good actors,” he said.
/cloudfront-us-east-1.images.arcpublishing.com/dmn/DGEV2OLJSRHK5KVI4PT3QHGFEA.jpg)
Rainbow Roll 2.0?
The team behind Rainbow Rolls isn’t close to its original goal of selling 10,000 rolls, but is happy with its success. Lapidus said it was slightly above the epidemic when the effort began in October. He said the NFT community also values knowing the identity of the artists that Rainbow Rolls holds anonymously.
The group is planning to launch a second project and is considering registering as a non-profit organization, Rapidus said. The timing depends on when everyone is available, but he plans to release it around April.
Most of the money will continue to be donated to charities, according to Rapidas. The group plans to re-partner with RIP Medical Debt, and perhaps some new charities.
“The people who helped with this were so well paid and so successful contributors that I wouldn’t have been able to pull them into this for money,” said Rapidas. “If needed, there is a very simple formula for earning $ 10 million overnight. They did it to help people.”
