My first post as your new president

Hello my dear empowr citizens,

It has been an intense 10 days (1.5 weeks) since my term began as your elected president of empowr.

Today, on my first official post as your president, I wanted to give you an update on our progress.

But first, for the benefit of our newest citizens, of which thousands are joining daily:

As a community, we are on a mission.

Our mission is to empower people like you (which means, we want to “give you power”).

We are working to do that by building and enabling technological and human systems.

Those systems are meant to create economic opportunity for you.

The systems are also designed to help give you the hope and motivation you need to work hard for your future.

And we wish to give you influence (meaning “power over”) the platform and things we’re bringing you that, we hope, will soon become more and more important to your life.

Indeed, by voting for me or the other presidential candidates, you have been experiencing some of that influence.

Here’s the official text of our mission:

“To empower people by enabling opportunity, hope and influence”.

I realize that many of you did not vote for me, either because you voted for a different candidate, or because you had not yet joined empowr when the empowr elections and voting were taking place late last month.

I will be your president too.

I will work as hard as humanly possible for you. You have my word and promise.

Since some of you don’t know much about me, I will use this – my first official post as president -- to share a little about myself and why I decided to throw my hat into the ring.

When I decided to join the many other very capable candidates that were competing to become president of empowr, I knew that if I ended up being lucky enough to win, I would be paying a very large price.

I would be, in essence, walking away from almost everything I valued in my life and day-to-day world.

First, I would need to quit my important role at the company I’ve been working at for many years in my home town of Lisbon, Portugal, because a requirement to become president of empowr is that I physically move to where all the employees are (San Diego, California) that would be reporting to me.

Even more painful than walking away from my role, colleagues (and income) at my company, taking on the president role at empowr would mean not seeing my young (only 12 years old) son for almost all of the years I would be spending in California at empowr’s headquarters.

I needed to do some soul-searching. I had to ask myself how much I really believed that empowr could and would be the organization that truly helped uplift billions of people out of poverty.

In the end, after much deliberation and reflection, I decided that empowr has the best chance of any company or organization on the planet of helping billions out of poverty.

I decided that was so, not just because it has the most progress of any company in the world of cryptocurrency, but because it is the only such organization that I am aware of, that has been built without taking a single penny from Wall Street, Silicon Valley banks, venture capitalists or any profit-seeking outside investors at all.

empowr will never have to compromise its mission or goals for the benefit of just a few rich investors, adding to the 8 richest people on the planet that, together, have as much wealth as the bottom half of humanity. And that means it has a real shot at creating an economy for everyone.

empowr’s mission and overarching goal are – uniquely – not just words that are easily debunked as soon as you follow the money and see who is financing it.

If I were to NOT take on the role of president, I would be deciding that my time with my son was more important than what I could do for – quite literally – millions of hungry people all over the planet.

Ultimately, it was a difficult decision.  

I knew I would regret if I didn’t take the role. I would simply never forgive myself if I didn’t do everything in my personal power to help the nearly 4 billion people, that are currently living on $2 USD (or less) per day, to improve their income and standard of living, even if that meant immense personal sacrifice.

And so here I am today.

It’s all about the economy

So, how do we uplift billions of people out of poverty?

There’s only one way:  Deliver to them a robust economy, that they can easily join from anywhere in the world – even from a cheap internet café if they don’t have a mobile phone or internet connection.

They should be able to create an account quickly and for free, and start earning and cashing out in as little as minutes after joining.

From the moment they join empowr, they must have access to a free educator -- someone local who speaks their language and knows their customs.

The educator must instruct them on the basics of earning, quickly teaching them how to become a productive member of the empowr economy, bringing value to others so that they too can extract value from the economy.

The tools and technologies we provide should enable them to produce as much as possible, with as little time as possible, so that they can extract much value quickly and still have time left over in their day to invest in the other things and people that are important to them.

So, now that you know why I am here – what we’re trying to do – and how we’re tryng to do it -- I will reiterate the promise I made to all community members: 

I will work as hard as possible for you -- to improve each aspect of everything we’re doing, and I will give you regular updates on our progress.

Here is the first of such updates:

1.  Coin trading

In prior posts, we learned that our coins need robust trading volume on the currency exchange.

As community members, we were all offered sizeable bonuses for trading coins on the exchange.

Unfortunately, given the short-comings of the currency exchange (Token.Store) our coin is listed on, we have all had a near-impossible time conducting trades.

Most importantly, the time we are all spending on that exchange has been taking us away from the time we must spend in the empowr marketplace.

After all, our most important responsibility and earning opportunity as individual citizens, and as a community, is to build a strong economy (marketplace for goods and services). That economy is a must-have for our mission to succeed, as I attempted to explain above.

Every moment we spend trading coins, is a moment taken away from our marketplace activities.

Therefore, in order to save everyone’s time, effective immediately I am asking empowr’s engineers to:

A.  No longer reward empowr citizens for trading on the old exchange (Token.Store)

B.  Effective this moment, we will all be rewarded for trading on a new exchange: www.DDEX.io 

The DDEX.io exchange appears to be much better designed and engineered.

It appears that with DDEX, the “failure” issue that has been a major issue for you on Token.Store will no longer be a problem: 

When a transaction occurs on DDEX, the orderbook immediately reacts and updates to the change. Because of this, there are almost never errors associated with trying to fill an order that doesn't exist. 

This is just another reason for us to be happy with this new move.

In addition, DDEX requires a substantially smaller fee for trades. 

DDEX is also easy to learn how to use. 

Simply follow these simple instructions in this post to learn how to trade on DDEX.

C.  And to make it even easier, I have instructed empowr’s engineers to provide us with the same bonuses for ALL our trades, regardless of the price of the coin.

Yes, that means that each of us can complete as many trades as we want to in just minutes or even seconds – using Instant Trading – so we can get back to empowr to focus on what matters even more (our marketplace activities).

As our focus comes off the price of the coin, what effect will that have on the price of the coin?

The singular thing that will ensure your coins are worth as much as possible in the long-term, is the adoption of the coin. For full details on why and how this is the case, refresh your memory here.

The best thing we can do for adoption is to focus everyone’s valuable and limited time on their marketplace activities.

Sure, I do agree that trading coins can be quite fun (and even profitable). 

And if that’s what you choose to do with your extra minutes (after you hit your daily goal and satisfy your customers on empowr) of course it’s better that you do that on a currency exchange platform that actually works and doesn’t frustrate you.

2.  Education of our citizens

As you know, our success coaches have been busy teaching students (via the presentation system) how to hit their daily goals.

We are now building part 2 of that process, so that students that are hitting their daily goals, can soon also be rewarded for attending another quick presentation with their success coach.  

In presentation #2, students will be shown how they can increase the size of their cash advances by 500% (and soon, 1,000%) by quickly trading (buying and selling) some coins on the new currency exchange.

Soon after, students will be eligible for awards for another presentation (#3) which will teach them how to further – and significantly – increase their cash outs and advances – by becoming more effective at providing value in the marketplace.

And finally, a 4^th presentation will become available to citizens – as early as next week – showing them a way to even further multiply up their cash outs and cash advances. You’ll need to attend the presentation to find out how!

It takes a village

To succeed, our community must continue to grow.

We will need to increase our capability to educate the thousands of new citizens that are joining empowr daily, and improve at helping them to become productive and successful in our marketplace and economy.

Along with looking to our mighty success coaches, each of us can help educate other citizens on how to do many simple things in empowr.

To assist with that, I have instructed empowr’s engineers to open up a new, robust chat system for empowr citizens.

In that manner, we all will have access to quick answers to the simple questions we might have, from the very people that (other than ourselves) are most rewarded by our success – the people we’re closing loops and transacting with daily.

And to ensure we don’t get run over by spammers and scammers on this new chat system, I am enabling only people that have closed 2 loops with each other to use the new chat system with each other.

Soon, I’ll also open it up to people that have bought or sold with each other, although those people have likely already closed 2 or more loops with each other and will already be able to chat.

In the next days, as the new chat is launched it surely will make empowr a lot more fun!

But the primary reason I’m pushing for this is to ensure the community can grow and succeed faster, by enabling community members to answer the simple questions each other has as they come up – leaving the more complex and time-consuming educational presentations to our mighty success coaches.

3.  Adoption of our platform and coin

Listen, I know the price of the coin is important to everyone. Like many of you, I have worked hard for many years to earn my EMPR coins.

Ultimately, as was discussed at length here, we have come to believe the best strategy for our coin price is a strategy that focuses on ensuring our coin gains wide adoption. 

The best approach for that is by focusing on building our economy (which means focusing on our marketplace activities and coaching), local merchants and application developers.

Therefore, in the ten days since I have taken on the role of president: 

·         I have asked May Ram (who along with her powerful team was the mastermind and force that built the Success Coach program) to take on the Local Merchant focus. 

·         I have asked a my presidential candidate competitor Annet Hoogenboom to, with May Ram’s blessing, move to San Diego to take on the management of the Success Coach program.

·         I have asked yet another presidential candidate competitor, Bob Poster to also move to San Diego to lead the development of the App Platform and program.

And given its importance, I am personally taking on the improvement of the empowr Marketplace, something that I promised you all I would do. 

I believe that by everybody doubling down on their focus on the marketplace and coaching, along with local merchants and application developer community, we will move the fastest and soon we will enjoy wider and wider adoption with our coin as a result. 

As discussed above, the amount of your energy being put into trying to keep the coin within a price range, I believe that is better placed in ensuring our coin gets wider adoption. 

In the short term, if that takes away from our current coin price, that’s fine if it means that our coin will be better off in the future.

(And a lower price in the short term actually means more coins for everyone that got here early (as in YOU if you are reading this) through ALL our activities – from hitting daily goals to selling products and services – and from coaching to buying coins!)

As I discussed above and in last Friday’s livestream, most of us are not in this for short term gain.

We’re in it to win it in a big way, for the people of the world and for ourselves and our families.

The win we are seeking is nothing short of a miracle for humanity as well as for ourselves.

Anything that gets us to focus on shiny objects in the short term, takes away from the momentum we should be creating for the big win. 

On that note, let’s move our trading over to the new exchange immediately as it is much more stable and we will now be rewarded for ALL our trades.  

Here’s a blog post that teaches you how do use the new exchange.

And thanks again to everyone (both the newest citizens and the old-timers) for believing and trusting in me. 

I will work hard to fully earn and be worthy of your trust and belief -- by getting you the results you deserve.

Together, we cannot be stopped.

Let me hear your thoughts!

Respectfully,

Your President, Carlos