Mazacoin Aims to be Sovereign Altcoin for Native Americans

This week, he hopes to mine the genesis block for mazacoin, an altcoin for the native American nation in the US. Specifically designed for the Traditional Lakota Nation, mazacoin is initially being targeted at the Oglala Lakota Nation, which is Harris' own tribe.

Harris is launching the altcoin under the Bitcoin Oyate Project, and hopes it will give native American communities some fiscal autonomy.

Mazacoin is based on the Zetacoin altcoin, which is in turn based on bitcoin's SHA-256 proof of work implementation.

A second pre-mine will generate another 25 million MZC, which will be given to a new entity: the Mazacoin Tribal Trust.

Anti-deflation is an important feature for a coin like mazacoin, which is designed to be used practically by the native American community, said 'Anonymous Pirate', an anonymous Canadian cryptocurrency expert and self-described hacktivist who created the coin for Harris.

"Bitcoin will always be useful, as a store of mass value like gold bars. But gold bars are not what you bring to the corner store to buy groceries," said AP. "The ideal merchantable value for mazacoin would be between 3 and 5 dollars USD. That would make it portable and easy to use/adopt."

"The crushing poverty makes the redistribution necessary if we are to ensure that mazacoin is circulating in the tribal economy," he says.

29% of native Americans were in poverty that year, which is almost twice the national average.

Harris wants mazacoin to stretch beyond those borders to be used by other tribal groups.

Mazacoin plans to mine the genesis block this week, and has scheduled a public launch for the coin on Feb 20th. Native American image via Shutterstock.