Humanitarian projects are also part of the blockchain technology agenda. Each day, more ventures try to take advantage of the versatility and adaptability of the approach to all fields and sectors to help those in need.
That is the case of Bail Bloc, an initiative that aims to help people held in custody by the United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE,) by mining Monero and exchanging the resulting amount for dollars at the end of each month.
ICE is a law enforcement agency in charge of controlling cross-border crime and illegal movements, including immigration. The US ICE performs pretrial incarceration to many of the subjects in question, and Bail Bloc, according to a tweet published by the company this week, intends to do something about it. The crypto money is raised through charity.
By the Numbers
The ICE arrested almost 145,000 people in 2017, and over 90% of those cases derived in a criminal conviction or are currently awaiting a charge. To achieve their immediate-term release, people need to pay an immigration bond, and naturally, there are lots of people without the means to provide such payment.
People that are not granted the bond or that cannot afford to pay them to need to await trial or charge (or court hearing, in most cases) while incarcerated. The process is known to take months, and sometimes, months turn into years.
Mining for Freedom
Bail Bloc observed the situation and found it unfair, so it mapped the objective of helping incarcerated immigrants to pay their bail thanks to funds raised through cryptocurrency mining. Bail Bloc, therefore, developed an app to perform such task: it consumes between 10 and 50 percent of the processing power of a computer to mine Monero (XMR.)
The donations exchanged at the end of each month from XMR to US dollars, are provided to the Immigrant Bail Fund in New Haven, in the State of Connecticut. According to statistics shown in Bail Bloc’s online page, it has managed to “bail out” 12 people, or at least that is the equivalent of what it has donated so far: 44.34 XMR, which amounts to a total of $7,356.36 US dollars.
Why Monero over other Cryptocurrencies?
According to Bail Bloc’s team, they chose Monero over other cryptocurrencies because it is an ASIC-resistant one, which means that particulars and regular, consumer-level devices are able to mine the coin in a sustainable and viable manner.
Monero is slightly down today, precisely at $87 at the moment of writing this piece, which would represent a 0.82 percent in the last day, reports CoinMarketCap. Trading volume was nearly $19 million, and the total market capitalization of XMR is hovering around $1.4 billion.
Naturally, Bail Bloc’s objectives and modus operandi have raised controversy among specific sectors of the American society, but so have ICE’s practices towards immigration and the policies they implement. Authorities reported back in May that the ICE separated hundreds of children from their parents as they were charged with criminal activity.
By Andres Chavez
