There are many applications of blockchain as of 2018. The industry has literally exploded with over 2000% over the last two years and this growth seems to be unstoppable, especially when it comes to newer blockchain applications.
The latest example comes from Chile. A habanero grower is currently raising money through what is called an Agrocoin. The coin is actually the first vegetable-backed cryptocurrency and is coming from the habanero fields of Quintana Roo, Mexico, according to press.
The company that produces and sells the habaneros, Amar Hidroponia, has turned to blockchain in order to attract investors and raise additional capital for production and expenses. Amar Hidroponia decided to create the digital currency Agrocoin.
As of now, one Agrocoin costs around $27 or around 500 pesos. The whole underlying value of the currency comes from 1sq.m. of habaneros in Leona Vicario. According to Mexico Daily News, the company currently expects to be able to pay an yearly dividend of around 30% of the actual cost, guided by supply and demand of production.
What the president of Amar Hidroponia has stated is that the company had interest from smaller investors to back up their production, but that was not so easy to do before. Agrocoin basically allows the pool of investors to be wider and everyone who is willing to invest to do so.
Mexico Daily News reported:
“We had a lot of people who wanted to invest, but with less money,” Amar Hidroponía president Rodrigo Domenzain told Bloomberg. “Agrocoin allows us to have a new investment product backed by agricultural goods.” We saw the opportunity of using the cryptocurrency-backing technology blockchain to share the profits [of their production],” said the firm’s CEO, Pablo Arteaga Veg.”
The lockup period for investors is one year and once they purchase the coin on the company’s website, they will be able to transact with the currency. Right now, Amar Hidroponia has sold around 50,000 Agrocoins out of the 1 million it plans to launch in the near future.
While many ICOs fail because there is no demand for the underlying product on which the ICO is usually built upon, this is not the case with Agrocoin. The simple reason for that is that the demand for the product is stable and actually growing, so the company does not expect any issues there.