Many cyclists have fantasized about getting paid to ride with no strings attached. But what if you could actually create money while biking?
That’s the theory behind Toba, a new line of electric bicycles that mine cryptocurrency while in motion. An experiment by the UK retailer 50cycles, these smart e-bikes would generate “LoyalCoin”—a digital asset like Bitcoin, but modeled after customer rewards programs—at a rate of about $26.50 for every 1,000 miles ridden.
“This is not only the first electric bike of its kind, but it will also be the first product ever to be tokenized and which issues reward for use,” 50cycles founder and CEO Scott Snaith told Cycling Industry News.
It works like this: Toba riders earn LoyalCoin as they pedal, then either redeem it at various brands or stores (including, naturally, 50cycles) or trade it on the market for other cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, Litecoin, XEM, and DigiByte. An accompanying app tells users how much they’ve earned, as well as LoyalCoin’s current price on the market. (A brand new form of crypto, LoyalCoin is trading for only about $0.0045 at the time of this writing. This is clearly a bet on Snaith’s part that the asset will take off.)
Toba e-bike 50cycles
A rendering of the Toba e-bike, which is still subject to change and will launch in mid-July.
50cycles
The bikes themselves, meanwhile, are nothing to sneeze at. Priced in the low-$2,000 range—discounts will be offered to customers who pay with crypto—the cruiser-style Tobas are designed for real-world riding, not just collecting digital dollars. They have seven speeds and come complete with lights, racks, and mudguards on a step-through frame. It’s the kind of bike you’d ride to the office. (There will also be a hybrid offering.)
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50cycles has been selling e-bikes both online and at a handful of brick-and-mortar locations since 2003, primarily to UK customers. This experience, Snaith told Bicycling, has helped the company assess rider needs while manufacturing an e-bike of its own.
“These bikes have been built on 15 years experience of selling electric bikes to over 25,000 customers,” he said. “We know what customers want from a bike.”
Essentially, the Toba is a solid e-bike with a sophisticated rewards program whose value will fluctuate based on a new, still-volatile crypto market. But as digital currencies grow in popularity, the tech has potential for growth. Snaith has hinted at the idea of Toba creating its own asset apart from LoyalCoin, which would eventually join what he predicts will be thousands of cryptocurrencies in the future.
“My two major passions in life, aside from my family, are electric bikes and the idea of blockchain decentralized technology… which is going to revolutionize the world of social economics,” he said.
