Cotton Coin

Hello fellow Steemians, crypto enthusiasts and anybody else who is reading this that may not fall into those categories, there is going to be coming a new and fantastic way for those in the cotton industry to receive their money that brings a good refreshment to one of the oldest textile industries in the world; Cotton Coin!

Background:
When I think of the cotton industry, I typically think of a southern United States farm with plants across many acres because I didn't really know much about the plant or industry. In doing research for this post though, cotton is a widely cultivated crop around the world. The producing of this article though has allowed me to open my eyes and learn more about this precious commodity and understand the impact cryptocurrency will have on it throughout the world.

The cotton industry is spread across the world, accounting for about 2.5% of the agricultural land use! That's a lot of land for one crop not used for food purposes. source The primary areas of growth are in subtropical areas in North America, Africa and Asia. With such an expansive list of countries, a lot of these areas include regions where there isn't a lot of economical honesty; poor farmers are taken advantage of by large companies for cheap raw materials and there isn't any incentive for these companies to change these practices.

A disturbing fact and statistic I learned from the Cotton Coin website is that according to the International Food Policy Research Institute, 300,000 cotton farmers have killed themselves since the mid 1990’s and they highlight financial reasons as the unfortunate cause for these unnecessary deaths. source These are preventable! No one should commit suicide because of monetary debt.

Cryptocurrency benefit:
We will now have the ability to help these farmers directly and alleviate some of the unfair practices that they are subject to by supporting and helping the Cotton Coin develop as a product and as a name for those that work in the cotton industry to recognize and understand that there are those that are trying to help them eliminate the cycle of poverty and prevent more needless suicides because of financial capture.

With the proliferation of smart phones and their lowered prices around the world, this is a very real possibility. Having easy access to technology available on the phones allows farmers and their families to sell their cotton directly to consumers and track the shipments all with their platform. Cotton coin has developed a plugin for the dApps platform that allows for users to interact much more fluidly, be they farmer, buyer (business-to-business[B2B])or consumer(business-to-consumer[B2C]). It allows the user to check package weights, confirm shipping information such as address, labels, and tracking numbers. They also leverage the fact that dApps is compatible with all of the major operating systems; Windows, iOS, and Linux so there is little room for folks to be left out if they own some technology.

To quote from their website, Cotton Coin has the capability of:

Once ready, our versatile solution will help to improve the distribution of cotton, resolve procurement issues, fight off corruption, support fair trade, and build trust among the cotton supply chain companies, consumers, and authorities in the emerging markets. And most importantly, help to save the lives of cotton farmers.

The blockchain technology is also key for allowing the success of this coin. They take advantage of:
Masternodes which allows multiple users to decentralize and host the platform and get a return on the investment, which helps with security and connectivity; it’s much harder to hack 50 Masternodes than it is to hack a central server with all of the information on it.
Proof of Stake which is what many people like; it requires someone to own a sizable stake in a coin to mine it. This makes it much harder for people to attack the network if they wanted to they would have to own a very large aspect of it and they would lose considerably. The Steemit platform this is written on is based off a version of PoS!
X-11 Hashing this hashing, or processing, of transactions is a strong change for the future. According to CCN, this latest version combines 11 different hash algorithms to provide top notch security for its transactions. It also is great for those running the Masternodes, it requires less CPU and GPU power thus allowing for lower operating costs and more efficient machines with less downtime source
Privacy they employ the use of Darksend, a platform that allows for transaction anonymity. Having our privacy is certainly a great thing nowadays!

Testimonials
A cotton farmer from Pakistan shares his views on Cotton Coin and its importance

Woman from China shares the payment issues that currently exist for those in China and around the world

Cotton Coin allows for the instant payment option, which is great for businesses that are exporting the cotton to get paid on time and appropriately without having to work harder for their money than they already do

Closing:
If you would like to learn more and to support this important project, please visit their website www.cottonco.in. Sharing this post, posting on other social media platforms and spreading the word about this would help the project immensely! Whatever we can do to help those that struggle to get paid in this, and struggle to get paid appropriate amounts of money is great. We can hope with the success of this, it can expand to other industries that typically rely on paying poverty wages to individuals for precious commodities.

Thank you for your time and please let me know your thoughts, opinions and ideas to help this project take off!

References:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cotton
www.cottonco.in