Waypoint Distribution Project Brings Container Based Green Energy to Off-Grid Areas Around the World
Green Bitcoin mining and NFTs to increase electricity and water access? Liquidstar, an innovative new green energy startup, believes this is the answer to solving United Nations Sustainable Development Goals 6 (Clean Water and Sanitation) and 7 (Affordable and Clean Energy). The young startup is on a mission to increase energy and water access across the globe for the combined 2 billion people in the world afflicted by this problem.
Liquidstar utilizes Waypoints, their custom designed 20-foot shipping container equipped with retractable solar panels, to charge rentable batteries and to pump and purify water. Customers in these areas come to the charging station to rent batteries and purchase water and when there is excess electricity, Liquidstar mines green bitcoin, ethereum and sells carbon credit NFTs to increase profit margins. As Liquidstar co-founder Scott Salandy-Defour points out understanding why the problem exists is important for understanding how Liquidstar approached the solution:
“The reason why people don’t have electricity is simply that it’s not profitable to serve them. The lack of profitability is further compounded by the fact that people who don’t have electricity often don’t have consistent revenue streams and don’t have many appliances that use electricity making it harder to generate a return on electricity. Once we understood that, we started to think about potential solutions in a different way from the standpoint of, what is the most efficient and easiest way to turn electricity into money. ”
This essentially means that no electrons generated go to waste, at minimum converting extra energy into a base store of value, increasing the average level of Waypoint revenue beyond pure sales of electricity based services. Bigger than that, Liquidstar returns a percentage of revenue from crypto mining and the sale of carbon credits to it’s users in the form of local currency or CBDC (i.e. e-naira).
What’s next for Liquidstar? After recently securing funding with Mistletoe as a lead investor, the venture capital firm of Taizo Son, and Celo’s venture capital arm, Flori Ventures Liquidstar’s first full Waypoint deployment is underway with USAID in Djibouti. Liquidstar is in the process of finalizing partnerships with USAID, ACTED, UNDP, and UNICEF across Kenya, Benin, Nigeria, and Indonesia. In Benin Liquidstar is working with the government and local partners to test and deploy a custom built electric bicycle. Finally the team is also working on an NFT drop that will allow holders of the NFT to vote on how profits from the charging station are distributed to local charities.
The company’s long-term vision and belief is that electricity is the true fundamental currency of civilizations – in the most reductive sense, all objects and services ever produced have an inherent energy cost to their existence. More so, without electricity mobile applications and other modern finance tools don’t work and can’t scale. Liquidstar’s mission is to build the infrastructure needed to succeed in an energy based economy that operates beyond the limits of traditional wired grid infrastructure and carbon fuel sources.
