
Ep. 14 BASIN Protocol is Building Nature's Balance Sheet
04/01/24 • 48 min
In today’s episode I have the pleasure of interviewing TMO of BASIN Protocol for a third time. TMO, AKA Thomas Morgan, having spent the majority of his career in commercial real estate, is the bridge we need for real world assets coming on chain.
TMO discusses the nuances of nature being on the balance sheet, versus nature having its own balance sheet. The former is the old extractive mentality, whereas the latter allows ecosystems to hold their own assets of value.
BASIN as a protocol is aimed to preserve, conserve, and restore more land by building a network of agents that are stewarding & flowing value into ecosystems. The protocol uses financial models that take real value, and then apply a monetary value to ecosystem services, such as pollination, biodiversity, soil health etc.
TMO explains how Basin’s 14 different ecosystems & 18 real values of natural capital fits into the broader Ecological Benefits Framework.
Corporations have personhood in the United States - so why not ecosystems, why not rivers & why not mountains? BASIN is creating structures so that ecosystems can fund themselves, in perpetuity. BASIN is giving land back to nature, where nature owns itself. BASIN is creating mechanisms to perpetually protect ecosystems and land against future lease and sell pressure. I thoroughly enjoyed this conversation, I hope you do as well.
BASIN's Twitter
TMO's Twitter
BASIN.Global
BASIN Field Manual
Confluence.BASIN
In today’s episode I have the pleasure of interviewing TMO of BASIN Protocol for a third time. TMO, AKA Thomas Morgan, having spent the majority of his career in commercial real estate, is the bridge we need for real world assets coming on chain.
TMO discusses the nuances of nature being on the balance sheet, versus nature having its own balance sheet. The former is the old extractive mentality, whereas the latter allows ecosystems to hold their own assets of value.
BASIN as a protocol is aimed to preserve, conserve, and restore more land by building a network of agents that are stewarding & flowing value into ecosystems. The protocol uses financial models that take real value, and then apply a monetary value to ecosystem services, such as pollination, biodiversity, soil health etc.
TMO explains how Basin’s 14 different ecosystems & 18 real values of natural capital fits into the broader Ecological Benefits Framework.
Corporations have personhood in the United States - so why not ecosystems, why not rivers & why not mountains? BASIN is creating structures so that ecosystems can fund themselves, in perpetuity. BASIN is giving land back to nature, where nature owns itself. BASIN is creating mechanisms to perpetually protect ecosystems and land against future lease and sell pressure. I thoroughly enjoyed this conversation, I hope you do as well.
BASIN's Twitter
TMO's Twitter
BASIN.Global
BASIN Field Manual
Confluence.BASIN
Previous Episode

Ep. 13 Leaky Weirs with Will Masters from Ogallala Life
Join us as Will Masters from Ogallala Life discusses how regenerative finance can breathe life back into landscapes. Will doesn't just talk theory, he and his team are actively building methods of landscape hydrologic restoration on the ground at the Wildcat Bluff Nature Center in the Texas panhandle.
Ogallala Life is at the intersection of nature, technology, and finance, navigating the rollercoaster of fundraising through cryptocurrency markets. Will discusses the nuances of landscape restoration, from the implementation of leaky weirs that rejuvenate creeks, to adaptive multi-paddock grazing that mimics the grazing patterns of the once prevelant bison that were the original stewards of our prairies.
Our conversation uncovers the challenges of carbon contracts and the much-needed narrative shift toward water stewardship that resonates with local landowners. With Will's insights, we explore the frontier of ecological monitoring, where blockchain technology can provide a new era of trustworthy environmental data.
Ogallala Life Twitter
Wild Cat Bluff Rehydration Campaign (Donation Link)
Next Episode

Ep. 15 Crypto Commons Association with Giulio Quarta
Today we dive into different economic models with Guilio Quarta from Crypto Commons association. Guilio, having a background in sociology, has been studying alternative practices of organizing and assigning value. This has caused Guilio to lean into the “Blockchain for good” space. What I especially resonated with was Guilio’s narrative agnostic approach, where his work seeks to be the narrative bridge that shows people they are doing things that are actually quite similar to each other, rather than strikingly different.
Guilio discusses the concept of how a system is what it does practically, not what it says it does. One warning Guilio gives is of venture capital funding taking away from the good of all stakeholders, and how alternative forms of funding can ensure that all stakeholders such as the broader ReFi community, regen farms, everyday people etc have their needs met, rather than the needs of Venture Capital.
Guilio could see a dystopian future of making the whole world a data ledger and then plugging in all the financial market activities and ecological values. Thus, he cautions the ReFi ecosystem, similar to Douglas Gayton’s from ReFi Generation Ep. 6, to ensure that what we are putting on the blockchain is further democratizing society and increasing inclusivity.
We finished the conversation with a teaser on CoFi - aka Collaborative Finance. The meme of CoFi originated after ReFi - but is a method of accounting that traditional financial systems have historically been using. CoFi focuses more on using credit & trust based systems to improve the local & global economy and looks at Ways to optimize existing financial systems without using tokenomics. One thing to note: Post capitalism does NOT mean communism or socialism, but rather other ways of assigning value, Conscious capitalism, for example, can be thought of a post capitalist modality.
Commons Economy
ReFi Barcelona
Co-Fi
ReFi Generation - Ep. 14 BASIN Protocol is Building Nature's Balance Sheet
Transcript
If you look at corporations in the US , corporations have personhood and they're recognized as people . So why not ecosystems , why not species , why not trees ?
Cash UptonWelcome to Refi Generation , the podcast that talks to experts and leaders in the new frontier of regenerative finance to examine how blockchain technology is creating th
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