Suppose you have a company in need of financing to take your innovative solutions to real-world problems to a broader audience and grow your business.

You could, in theory, go to the bank and find stodgy resistance to your request for a loan – and then, of course, face interest rates that would eat up all your profits.

You may have alternatively heard a lot about bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies – and then likely, most recently, about Sam Bankman-Fried. Then you look a little deeper and find Ethereum’s Decentralized Autonomous Organization, first reading about the $168 million in investments and then about the hack attack that led to a $50 million loss and the currency’s demise.

If only there were a cryptocurrency backed by legitimate assets – a cryptocurrency that had the same type of backing as a bank, but with a lot more flexibility.

Then you learn there is such a currency – and that it is structured democratically such that individual holders of this currency can choose to help you fund your project; that it is not just the board of directors who decides your fate.

Not long ago, such a currency was a dream, but today, that dream has come true, thanks, in part, to a group of investors who pooled some of their assets to roll out the Unicoin two years ago.

By 2025, over $525 million worth of Unicoins will have been sold, according to the company website. Now, others appear to be copying the template to create additional asset-backed cryptocurrencies.

I recently had the opportunity to speak with Argentine-born entrepreneur Silvina Moschini, who created the enterprise, ‘Unicoin’. Her group was already in the business of finding quality enterprises that wanted to go public but needed a direct pathway to diversified investors from around the world.

Early on, her Executive Leadership Team saw how Web3 blockchain technologies and token-based economics are opening up wealth creation opportunities that cut across traditional pathways and provide access for first-time and experienced investors alike.

In 2021, Moschini and several other entrepreneurs unveiled a streaming televised series they called Unicorn Hunters, which Real Screen described as mixing “entertainment with the potential for consumers [as well as the show’s entrepreneurs] to back select pre-IPO investment opportunities.”

In February 2022, the panel went on to introduce the Unicoin, which fellow Unicorn Hunter and legendary Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak says is an asset-backed cryptocurrency tied to the financial results of the companies in which they and their viewers have invested. As these assets grow and pay dividends, the value of each Unicoin grows with them.

By contrast, the value of the dollar, the currency of traditional banks, shrinks with every inflationary move of the federal government.

As a corporation, Unicoin acquires a 5 percent equity stake in the companies it promotes to the investor community. Individuals can choose to diversify their own risk through Unicoin or via direct investment in those companies.

But Unicoin is far more than a tool for investing in promising businesses. Moschini says, “We think like financiers. We are building here under Unicoin a basket of high-growth potential assets already well known for retaining value and generating revenue.”

“We can,” says Moschini, “use unicoins to buy advertising, including billboards in airports using Unicoin as currency. We can use AI to develop initiatives to match investors with opportunities suited to their goals. Ultimately by decentralizing the coin, we can react to a fast-changing environment in real time.”

Again – traditional banks, by contrast, rely on a bureaucracy that moves much more slowly.

Unicoin also recently introduced a real estate investing platform that allows people to invest real estate into Unicoin, essentially swapping their real estate for coins. Already this platform has brought into the fold a five-star hotel in Thailand and a copper mine in Argentina among other globe-spanning initiatives wholly via coin swapping.

Unicoin does all this utilizing a highly decentralized team in the creative industry that includes developers from central and eastern Europe and other team members in nations such as Canada, Brazil, Colombia, the U.S., and Argentina.

Moschini, citing as an example how Facebook replaced MySpace, stated that Unicoin is driving this second generation of crypto – built on transparency and backed with tangible assets – in-part thanks to learning from the mistakes that caused first-generation cryptocurrencies to falter.

A primary goal now is working with lawmakers to craft a regulatory framework that does not stifle investment, but protects investors from fraudulent activity. Unicoin’s own assets are subject to auditing, which, along with transparency in transactions, must become the regulatory norm.

While Unicoin has grown rapidly, and the value of each unicoin has increased by 4,900%, Moschini envisions further expansion into such items as luxury-brand sneakers, sporting goods, and clothing – even Unicoin tee shirts – to build the brand.

Branding, she notes, along with effective communication, trust and engagement, are of paramount importance to building loyalty to the company.

Worldwide access via the Internet has changed the nature of the investing world, says Moschini. Addressing a Blockchain Expo in London earlier this week, “we were surprised to have so many investors stop by our booth.”

But then, investors in Unicoin already come from 160 of the world’s nations.

Unicoin is today applying for licenses in Dubai, indeed the United Kingdom (UK), and many other nations as part of its campaign to open up investment to the world’s masses. Their vision is to democratize access to wealth and to ensure that this vision remains central, as Unicoin diversifies and scales upward into assets far beyond real estate and IPOs – even possibly into carbon trading.

To the intrepid entrepreneurs entering the decentralized marketplace for the first time, or to the seasoned – I agree with Canadian businessman and ‘Shark Tank’ icon, self-made entrepreneur Kevin O’Leary’s recent proclamation on the future of digital finance – I too am bullish on crypto and in 2024, as the dust settles in what many considered the Wild West, with regulators clearing the field, it’s truly time for new, exciting, diverse and cross-industry endorsed “compliant platforms to unlock this sector’s true potential”.