In the time it took for this feature article to load, hundreds of cryptocurrency transactions will have been processed on the roughly 1,000 blockchain networks used to confirm the movement of different digital coins. And by the time you’ve finished reading, the number — if we were to account for all the world’s blockchain networks, including the most popular, like Ethereum 2.0 — will be exponential.

It would be untrue, then, to suggest that the crypto space was anything but burgeoning. But it would be similarly false to say that, as the sector continues to grow, the broad societal perception of crypto is a wholly positive one. Ever since its relative popularisation in 2009 with the arrival of Bitcoin, crypto has been met with the following common criticisms: that it’s a glorified Ponzi scheme; that it has no intrinsic value; that the processes underpinning crypto is further damaging planet Earth; and that, ultimately, it’s a young person’s venture and too bewildering to be adopted by those outside of tech circles.

One crypto-driven company proving that such catch-all critiques can be unfounded and untrue is The Scotcoin Project. As a not-for-profit Community Interest Company (CIC), The Scotcoin Project goes against the grain of the wider public consensus of what crypto is, what it can be used for, how it’s made, and what a company’s intent for creating its own cryptocurrency could be in the first place. Specifically, Scotcoin (or “SCOT”), its cryptocurrency, funds the Project’s ability to work with myriad Scottish, UK, and worldwide charities and initiatives that are doing important community- and environmentally-focused work.

To discover what compelled The Scotcoin Project to combine the world of crypto with altruism, DIGIT sat down with Temple Melville, The Scotcoin Project’s 74-year-old CEO. We discussed the inspiration behind the organisation’s mission-driven ethos, how it’s directly using cryptocurrency as a tool for social and environmental good, and how other companies, both in Scotland and beyond, can begin to get involved in community- and eco-positive efforts themselves.

The Origins of Scotcoin and The Scotcoin Project CIC

In 2014, amid the lead-up to the Scottish referendum, Derek Nisbet, an IT professional and fintech entrepreneur, created Scotcoin as a potential national currency for which to trade, should Scotland break away from the United Kingdom. However, over time (and after the outcome of the referendum), Nisbet had simultaneously less interest and less time to commit to the running and the growth of Scotcoin.

Enter Temple Melville and David Low; two friends who, between them, had extensive and in-depth experience across myriad business sectors over the years. Inspired by Scotcoin’s untapped potential, the pair approached Nisbet with the mind to buy him out. And in early 2016, Melville and Low officially became the new owners of Scotcoin. The acquisition, which was made for an undisclosed sum, marked the beginning of Scotcoin’s future — and The Scotcoin Project Community Interest Company’s future, too.

“We had a very definite view of what we wanted to do,” Melville told DIGIT. “It was quite clear that not only in Scotland — but across many places — there were needs that people had which were simply not being addressed by the existing system in one way or another. And so, we set out to help where we could, setting up The Scotcoin Project as a Community Interest Company. A CIC has charitable purposes, and you can’t really make any money out of it — that all fit exactly with what we wanted to do.”

In terms of the pair’s goals with The Scotcoin Project, Melville and Low wanted to educate the general public about blockchain technology, digital currencies, and Scotcoin, with Scotcoin being a method for addressing the need for a national digital cryptocurrency, while also being beneficial for Scotland’s economy-at-large as well as its local economies. Moreover, the issues of homelessness, clothes and food waste, and climate change were becoming ever more pressing — areas The Scotcoin Project was keen to help improve and alleviate.

From that point forward, a symbiotic relationship between Scotcoin and The Scotcoin Project was established, with Scotcoin becoming what would drive The Scotcoin Project vehicle to deliver positive change and value.

Growing Scotcoin in Line With the Project’s Values

After the 2016 acquisition, there were several notable events in the following years that accelerated Scotcoin’s growth, and helped the Project to act on its founding mission.

Firstly, in 2018, the Project secured £80,000 in external funding, used to increase awareness of SCOT, and to promote it as both a valuable asset and an emerging means of transaction and method of acquiring in-store and online goods.

Secondly, with crypto’s ongoing, global expansion — and despite its somewhat entrenched broader societal perception — more and more of the Scottish public became aware and active in the crypto sector. This was a nation-wide change Melville witnessed first-hand. As he told DIGIT: “Four or so years ago, when I gave a university lecture, I asked, “Who’s got cryptocurrency? And who knows about blockchain?” At that stage, probably 4 or 5% of the audience said they had crypto, and maybe 1% said they knew about blockchain. However, at my last lecture at the University of Strathclyde, about 80% actually held some form of crypto, and all of them knew about blockchain. That’s a huge turnaround.” In fact, according to research undertaken by UK-based money app Ziglu, around 12% of Scottish respondents bought crypto in 2021, with that rate suggested to increase to 15% over the year. It’s not hard to imagine that figure rose over 2022, and continues to in 2023.

Another important aspect of Scotcoin’s growth to date was the transition to the aforementioned Ethereum 2.0 blockchain. Against the backdrop of expensive running fees, comparatively slow processes, and worries about the reported energy use associated with crypto, a newer, more streamlined, and more environmentally-conscious blockchain solution was required.

Serendipitously, around the same time, a sector-changing development was around the corner: the Ethereum Merge. Essentially, the Merge represented a move away from an outdated proof-of-work system — where myriad computers across a decentralised network confirm which transactions are legitimate, thereby “minting” new coins — to a proof-of-stake system. The proof-of-stake system — where randomly-selected but opted-in validators update the blockchain with the latest verified transactions, instead of energy-intensive miners — has been said to have brought Ethereum’s network power consumption down by around 99.9% (drawing 2,600 megawatt hours per year, as opposed to 23 million megawatt hours per year), and is also faster and more secure to boot.

In response to the advancement — and to better meet its needs — the Project adopted the newly-created system. “We immediately recognised that [Ethereum 2.0] was going to make processes much more eco-friendly, which again fitted with what we wanted to do,” Melville explained. Further, Scotcoin moved to become an ERC20 Ethereum mainnet coin. ERC20 is an Ethereum standard that enables people to issue and implement their own tokens, and any newly-created tokens are interchangeable with other smart contract tokens, too.

Technical upgrades aside, The Scotcoin Project has been engaging with various crypto exchanges since last year to list publicly the tokens, meaning that Scotcoin — or rather, SCOT — could be bought and sold for either fiat currency (e.g., GBP, USD, or Euros) or other cryptocurrencies on the open market. The decision was made to target the millions of Scottish diaspora located across the globe — as well as anyone else with an urge to do good — providing folks with further opportunity to obtain Scotcoin for themselves.

The continued growth of Scotcoin over the years, then, could be best described as measured, intentional, and iterative — traits that inherently separate it from many crypto and blockchain rugpull projects — with the Project team only undertaking growth-related actions that directly aligned with its mission of being an ethical cryptocurrency. And it’s thanks to Scotcoin’s growth that the Project could then implement and collaborate on initiatives that have people and the environment at their heart.

Making a Difference With Scotcoin

For The Scotcoin Project, being actively mission- and ethically-led was imperative from the very beginning. But for the Project’s impact to be meaningful and effective — i.e. not just what seemed good on paper — going about the initiatives and collaborations in a deliberate manner was necessary. “There are around 23,000 cryptocurrencies, currently. And all bar a small handful of them, they’re all a complete waste of time because they’ve been made for people to get rich quick,” Melville said, candidly. “But what we do is we go out, and we use our cryptocurrency directly to help — for example, charities. I mean, you can have cryptocurrency, and you can then sell it and give the money to a charity — or give cryptocurrency to charities — and they’ll plug it into something. But that’s not actually making use of the cryptocurrency; all that’s doing is making use of financial instruments. Our approach is quite different.”

By “quite different,” Melville means valuable partnerships and collaborations with charities and third sector organisations. One particularly notable example is Emmaus, the Glasgow-based homelessness charity helping to house and upskill homeless adults in need of stability, to whom the Project supplied clothes that would’ve otherwise been needlessly burned by the clothing company due to a lack of consumer interest.

“Clothing companies are forever burning clothes,” Melville said. “We found out about a company that had a whole lot — pallets full — of hoodies and tracksuits that were going to be incinerated. So we went to them and said, ‘We will pay you in Scotcoin, we will take these from you, and we will use them,’ which they saw the logic in. We then shipped the goods to Emmaus, and the charity handed the salvaged clothes to lots of people in need of them. That was a win-win from the charity’s point of view, but also from the point of view of the manufacturer; they then didn’t have the cost of burning the clothes, but they also got something for nothing. They could then use the Scotcoin themselves, keep it within their own ecosystem, or give it out as rewards to customers, and so on. It’s a really good system — and really worthwhile.”

When undergoing collaborations like this — where oversupply and waste is redistributed — Melville says that the Project has “preferred” partners it works with to ensure the subsequent impact is targeted and meaningful. As well as the aforementioned Emmaus, the Project has either previously or presently partnered up with: Social Bite, the Scottish social business providing homes, jobs, food, and support to those in need; Eat Up, the Scottish goodwill food charity; and Bobath, the charity whose mission is to improve the lives of people with cerebral palsy, as well as Helpful Hounds, Cerebral Palsy Scotland, and FARE Scotland.

Speaking of FARE Scotland, one of the Project’s most recent collaborations supported the Easterhouse-based grassroots charity, whose work helps improve the lives of disadvantaged communities across Central Scotland. In this instance, the Project donated an assortment of plants, flowers, compost, and other important materials, thereby transforming the charity’s community allotment. To deliver the materials, the Project used its links to BBX — a crypto network that secures excess goods and materials for third sector projects — to pay for the materials with Scotcoin. While some may not perceive the Project’s recent collaboration with FARE and its community allotment to be as impressive as the clothes redistribution for Emmaus, it’s an undeniably well-fitting metaphor for how the ties between the crypto space and the third sector are growing, while also somewhat serving as further proof-of-concept as to how actionable altruistic endeavours can be built around a crypto framework.

The Project’s outwardness — collaborating with external, third sector organisations — doesn’t mean that the Project doesn’t look inward, though: Last year, as part of reducing its own impact on the environment amid climbing global temperatures, the Project achieved carbon neutrality. Specifically, The Scotcoin Project offset 100 tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent through investment in a project delivered by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) Adaptation Fund, which reduced the emissions of damaging greenhouse gases, thanks to a thermal oxidisation system.

Speaking of offsetting, the Project also recently launched the Scotcoin Carbon Offset initiative, providing Scottish and UK businesses and individuals with a platform to commit to carbon neutrality by offsetting their own yearly carbon consumption via fiat currency or Scotcoin payment. This initiative works similarly to the just-mentioned carbon offsetting project: A payment is taken by the Project and redistributed towards companies, projects, and initiatives that actively work to reduce carbon. And while offsetting itself isn’t the sole answer — rather a part of an intricate equation — it’s another simple way for both individuals and businesses to act.

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Doing Good Is a Modern Imperative for Businesses

All businesses — large or small, for-profit or not-for-profit, Scottish or international — have an impact on the local community and the wider environment. For instance, when it comes to the environment alone, and according to statistics from the Office for National Statistics, businesses account for nearly one-fifth (18%) of all UK greenhouse emissions. And many more companies are recognising that actively participating in positive initiatives, projects, and efforts is an important way to offset actions that result in a negative impact.

For the founders, C-suites, and other decision-makers who now feel compelled to get their own companies involved with beneficial initiatives and work to support charities but don’t know where or how to start, Melville has some sage advice to offer.

“First of all, it’s a question of figuring out what you feel you’d like to do, and then focusing on that. There’s a very fine third sector in Scotland, with charities and organisations operating all over. Each company needs to think carefully.” This intentionality regarding determining who or what you’d like to help will better target your business’ philanthropic efforts, and ultimately result in a deeper, more profound impact.

“Secondly, ask what the charities themselves need. Let’s say, for example, you really want to help communities in Inverkeithing. If that’s the case, there are almost inevitably going to be several small charities operating in Inverkeithing. But asking the charities ‘What do you need?’ is critical — it’s the driver. It’s what the Project does; we’re not saying, ‘Here’s this’ or ‘Here’s that’, we say, ‘Give us a list of what you need.’ We find this very helpful because there are certain aspects we can’t aid with, while there are quite a number of things we can. So ask the charities what they want.”

What’s on the Horizon for The Scotcoin Project

The Scotcoin Project’s own third sector work is by no means over. The team of 11 is constantly working on existing projects with partners, while also spinning up new projects and collaborations, so the Project’s mission can continue to be met in new and profound ways.

When asked what Melville would especially like the Project’s philanthropic efforts to continue focusing on — and potentially even ramp up — generally-speaking, he said the issue of homelessness. “In 2019, around 216 people died on the streets of Scotland. I don’t care where you live in the world — people shouldn’t die on the street. That shouldn’t happen, and we should help people off the streets. Personally, I would really love to be the person who can do better for Scotland in terms of homelessness,” Melville told DIGIT.

Whichever initiatives, projects, and collaborations The Scotcoin Project CIC has in store and works on in the future, it’s safe to say they’ll be for the good of the planet and its people. And we’ll be eagerly waiting to see where the Project will distribute Scotcoin and its efforts next.