SolarCoin cofounders and Starlab​ alumni Nick Gogerty ​and Christopher Altman were joined by solar advocates Luke Johnson and François Sonnet to create ElectriCChain, the self-organizing, decentralized swarm intelligence distributed ledger and Internet of Things (IoT) that forms SolarCoin’s blockchain backbone.

The supply of SolarCoin has been designed to last forty years, delivering incentives for generating 97,500 TWh of solar electricity. Each coin issued to renewable energy producers represents a carbon offset​ of 680 kilograms of carbon dioxide.

To date, the project has granted more than 12 TWh of solar power across 71 countries—the equivalent energy consumed by 12 million US households in a month—well over enough to power the city of Amsterdam and its residents for a full year.

Counting more than thirty international affiliates and seven million real-time solar monitoring stations in sixty-two countries around the globe—estimated by UN projections to grow to more than 200 Million over the next decade—the program has been recognized by the United Nations​ and the International Renewable Energy Agency​ (IRENA​) as the lowest carbon currency, the largest environmental monitoring experiment, and the largest private renewable energy​ project in the world.

With a total market supply of more than US $40 Billion to be distributed over the next 35 years, the currency places in the top ten cryptocurrencies by total market value behind Bitcoin​, Ethereum and Ripple.​

The project has been covered extensively by international press in thirty countries, with more than 100 featured publications in sources such as Forbes: “How Blockchain is Incentivizing a 5,000 Gigawatt Quest to Save the Planet.”

When Starlab​ came up short on research funds and serendipity brought him to the same Brussels hotel as George W. Bush on his inaugural trip overseas, he sought the counsel of the President himself to save the lab, requesting $1M in support under mandate of the 2000 National Nanotechnology Initiative​ created under tenure of President Bill Clinton​. ​ For his contributions to the program, he was selected by the US Government as one of three graduate students most likely to impact the future of the field at the Salishan conference, sponsored to attend conferences and senior administrator briefings at NSA headquarters outside Washington, DC, attended the World Technology Summit in London, and was an invited delegate to the French Sénat to provide testimony on the future of artificial intelligence​ and how it will transform our lives over coming decades.

Altman has been recognized with honors and awards including a Japanese national Fulbright Fellowship, the Guinness Book of World Records, a joint US Department of Defense–Department of Energy Salishan High-Performance Computing fellowship, dual Templeton fellowships to the Anton Zeilinger quantum research group in Austria, appointments to diplomatic and humanitarian aid missions worldwide as Chairman for the UNISCA First Committee on Disarmament and International Security—selected for the annual RSA Information Security Award for Outstanding Achievement in Government Policy—as Ambassador Extraordinary at Large for Peace, Human Rights, Space & Next-Generation Technologies, and as Special Envoy to the United Nations and the European Union.

 

The renewable energy cryptocurrency for climate change and beyond

 

SkyGold

Chairman, Disarmament & International Security

In the aftermath of the September 11 attacks, Altman volunteered and was subsequently elected to serve as Chairman for a UN Disarmament and International Security Committee​, leading several hundred upcoming diplomats to address and combat the threats of international terrorism, global and regional nuclear security, and information warfare​. His Chair Report to the UN General Assembly​ on the promise and perils presented by the rapid acceleration of unpredictable advances in converging technologies was read by the Secretary General​, at the Executive Office of the President, by National Security Advisors, at Presidential and Prime Minister’s offices around the world, was reviewed by national security advisor Condoleezza Rice, open source intelligence founder Robert David Steele​, and futurists Alvin & Heidi Toffler—was instrumental in building political momentum and influencing Congressional policy to establish the foundations for US Cyber Command​—and was subsequently recognized with the 2004 Award for Outstanding Achievement in Government Policy.

NASA Quantum Future Technologies

As part of the DARPA Quantum Information Science and Technology (QuIST​) Program​, he traveled the world to visit leading national labs, cutting-edge corporate and university research centers, interviewing top researchers and Nobel laureates to craft long-term national assessments on the future of quantum technology for principal US research and funding agency directors. His reports went on to serve as the template for the official US Quantum Roadmap—an accolade conveyed directly by the program’s chairman, Los Alamos​ physicist Richard Hughes.

Following the inaugural NASA Quantum Future Technologies Conference, he brought together a team of world-record holding inventors and pioneers in secure quantum communications​, serving as principal investigator on a joint research proposal under DARPA Quiness​ and NASA Institute for Advanced Concepts ​mandate to create the world’s first global, space-based quantum teleportation​ network—Astronaut Development and Deployment of a Secure Quantum Space Communications Channel.

Global mandate

Altman’s background and leadership accomplishments have been featured in several publications including the 2015 sequel to !nnovation: How Global Leaders Think, Act and Change Our World, Flat World Navigation: Collaboration and Networking in the Global Digital Economy, which conducted in-depth interviews with industry pioneers and innovators such as Vint Cerf​, “Father of the Internet.” His leadership role in the nascent commercial spaceflight industry has been featured in several Springer publications including Training Suborbital Astronauts, Who Becomes a Commercial Astronaut?, and Astronauts for Hire: The Emergence of the First Commercial Astronaut Corps.

He is a frequent keynote and invited speaker, committee and conference chair at federal government hearings, science and technology conferences, space, security and leadership summits including UNESCO​, UNISCA, the French Senate, the Global Leadership Forum, the National Security Agency​, the Gordon Research Conference, the Internet of Things Security Summit, the Global Space and Technology Convention, Internet of Things World, Further Future: TED​ Meets Burning Man​, TEDxBeaconStreet, and Mobile Monday: Amsterdam, where his inaugural keynote address as an astronaut candidate on the future of science, technology and human spaceflight was broadcast live to 108 cities around the world.

A nationally-syndicated, live two-hour radio interview explored his perspective on the future of science and technology, covering topics including global consciousness​ and the “Overview effect,” breakthroughs in quantum entanglement and teleportation, CRISPR/Cas9 gene editing​; artificial intelligence and Elon Musk​’s OpenAI initiative; magnetic thorium nuclear plasma drives; warp drives and wormholes​ for space exploration; multidisciplinary research institute Starlab, “Deep Future” research, time travel​ and retrocausality​; disaster relief and humanitarian aid, analogue Special Forces​ field operations with Synergy Strike Force​ at Black Rock City​, National Defense University​, and the Pentagon; the next generation of government leadership in the post-scarcity economy​; the technological singularity; outer space and inner space—and a myriad of other future trends.

He serves as chairman, director, board member and scientific advisor to multiple leading organisations working to address today’s global challenges and ensure humanity’s future as a multiplanetary species. He has appeared in several science documentaries to date, including a two-part Discovery Channel Special​ on multidisciplinary blue skies research​ institute Starlab, filming the inaugural class of spaceflight training with the world’s first commercial astronaut​ corps, and in conversations on the long-term future of intelligent life in the universe with The Consciousness​ Chronicles.