Imagining a USPS ICO & the next generation of forever stamps
Disclaimer: Even though I am American, I know very little about the actual inner workings of the United States Postal Service. Are they a public or a private entity? What do their books look like?
Secondly, I am a relative newcomer to the crypto space but, the more I learn more about it, the more I can’t help but think: Woah, what if….
Recently, a package of mine got lost in the mail for 10 days. No one at the USPS knew what had happened. It made me reflect (as I do every time I’m in a post office) on the terrible state of the US Postal Service.
The USPS has such an awesome legacy: it was literally a lifeline for some of the earliest Americans, its missives were delivered by horse, by train, through barely mapped terrain, inspiring the poetic, unofficial motto: “neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds.”
Sounds pretty badass to me.
But the USPS we know today is in shambles. The lines suck, the facilities are post-apocalyptic, and the systems they use are outdated. The people who work there can be described as resigned, and the people (like me) who still go there leave frustrated and without real recourse because, technically, the USPS is not a “real” business and, despite all of the money we pay, we are not “real” customers.
Image Source: Luke Sharrett/Bloomberg
So here’s how I think that crypto could save the US Postal Service:
What we know:
- The USPS is woefully understaffed and underfunded
- The USPS recorded a net loss of $5.6 billion for 2016 (Source: The Hill)
- The USPS computer systems are slow, outdated, and unoptimized
- The USPS leases/occupies space in prime locations throughout the US
Meanwhile, ICOs are raising millions of dollars.
What if the USPS teamed up with a small group of blockchain developers and created its own token? Couldn’t we create the first national postal service funded and sustained by crypto?
A USPS ICO would allow the public to purchase tokens to fund a major and much-needed overhaul of its systems and facilities.
Instead of being privatized, as some have suggested, the USPS could become decentralized.
A USPS token could be bought, traded, and sold like any other cryptocurrency BUT USPS tokens could always retain a base value as postage so that people who invest in them would never actually lose on their investment. Think next generation forever stamps.
With the funds raised by its ICO, the USPS could hire a team of marketers, operations experts, and resource managers to help them actually run the postal service like a business.
They could develop a new, highly optimized, secure OS so that employees can access information and communicate with each other (and customers) easily and efficiently.
The USPS could renovate its facilities to optimize them for sorting mail and helping customers while introducing new streams of revenue such as small retail spaces, cafes and even coworking facilities.
The USPS could sell cards, gifts, and more packing items in the new retail spaces to expand upon their current offerings or it could lease the space to third party vendors and earn income from the rent plus a percentage of sales.
Where space allows, the USPS could also build workspaces and/or cafes in their existing locations that could act as additional streams of revenue. These workspaces could be managed as coworking spaces or as accelerators: encouraging new businesses to flourish and fresh energy and ideas to flow back into the USPS.
By allowing the USPS to integrate blockchain into its business model, the US government would be showing the world that it is actively leveraging new technologies to effect positive change.
This is just an exercise in understanding how cryptocurrencies could benefit us in a big way and help resurrect and revolutionize outdated, overburdened systems.
At the very least this is just one more use case for blockchain but, I’m curious to hear what you think: could it actually work?