NEWS
‘Rhino Coin’: Can a Cryptocur-
rency Help Save Africa’s
Rhinoceroses?
South African ranchers who raise rhinos are supporting a virtual currency, backed by
stockpiles of valuable rhino horn, to fund protection of the threatened animals. But their
hopes rest on the long-shot gamble that the global ban on the horn trade will be lifted.
Adam Welz
Reprinted From: http://bit.ly/2T8W6cy
I
n a deep underground vault some-
where in South Africa is a well-guarded
collection of rhino horns, each of which
has been weighed, measured, photo-
graphed, and tagged with a microchip,
and had its DNA sampled, decoded,
and recorded in a database. Together,
the horns — legally harvested from rhi-
nos raised on private land — weigh 108
kilograms. “In terms of an undervalued
asset, it’s madness,” says Alexander
Wilcocks, a director of Cornu Logistics,
the company that owns the stash.
Wilcocks is referring to the fact that ille-
gally-traded rhino horn — used to make
jewelry, or sold as “medicine” with no
significant proven effect — is currently
one of the most valuable commodities
on the planet, going for up to $125 per
gram on the black markets of Asia.
The international trade of rhino horn
has been banned for decades. But that
has not stopped Wilcocks and his part-
ners, supported by South Africans who
raise and protect rhinos on their own
land, from devising a scheme that could
net its investors massive profits should
international trade one day be legal-
ized. They’ve launched a new digital
currency called Rhino Coin, through
which almost anyone can own a share of
the horn in Cornu’s vault for about $4 a
gram — a tiny fraction of the black mar-
ket value.
South Africa has by far the world’s larg-
est rhino population, with an estimated
15,000 to 20,000 white and black rhi-
noceroses. But poachers have been kill-
ing more than 1,000 rhinos a year there
since 2013, and many of the country’s
330 private rhino owners — who care for
more than 7,000 rhinos — say they are
going broke paying for security to keep
Grassroots
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Figure 1: Recently removed rhino horns on a private ranch in the North West
province of South Africa. Photo: Mujahid Safodien/AFP/Getty Images
heavily armed poaching syndicates
from slaughtering their animals for their
horns. By selling Rhino Coin — a virtual
currency somewhat like Bitcoin, but
backed by rhino horn — Wilcocks says
his company can raise capital for rhino
protection. It’s “cryptocurrency with a
conscience,” he says.
“Private reserves have spent well over
2 billion Rand (about $140 million) from
2009 to the end of 2017 in protecting
their animals,” says Pelham Jones, chair-
person of the Private Rhino Owners As-
sociation. “We desperately require a rev-
enue stream to pay for the conservation
of these animals, especially when you
put it in the context that we now own
about 50 percent of the national herd.”
March 2019
“We desperately
require a revenue
stream to pay for
the conservation of
these animals,” says
a spokesman for
rhino ranchers.
Rhino Coin lies at the bleeding edge of
a debate that has raged for years about
legalizing trade in rhino horn, a debate
sharpened by ongoing, intense poach-
ing. The international sale of rhino horn
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