People in underdeveloped countries are the ones who need Bitcoin the most, but they know the least about it. When using Bitcoin for aid, it is necessary to consider the socio-economic limitations.
People can achieve financial autonomy with Bitcoin since it is a censorship-resistant currency that offers a new way to transfer value. These characteristics lead many to consider Bitcoin the perfect technology for humanitarian use cases. However, some of the proponents of this vision may not be considering the difficulties of this cryptocurrency in countries with weak economic infrastructures.
In recent days, Marco Barbosa from the Impact Market project, Anita Posch from the Bitcoin & Co podcast, and Frereshteh Forough from the Code to Inspire initiative discussed this issue. Each of them has developed social projects in which Bitcoin and blockchain networks play a key role. This has been a task that they describe as rewarding but which has had some setbacks.
Posch, who lives in Austria, traveled to Zimbabwe and Botswana in the first months of 2019 to understand how people in these countries overcame the difficulties with Bitcoin. She believes that the true strength of Bitcoin is that it can change the lives of people, especially of those who have financial limitations and whose rights are continuously in danger.
“For me, blockchain and Bitcoin are tools to give people and individuals more freedom and a new distribution of wealth,” Posch said. On her social media and her podcast platform, she started a donation campaign to help a school in Zimbabwe that needs funding to keep running.
At first, the principal of the school was incredulous about how Bitcoin works and “called [it] Monopoly money,” Posch stated. She was afraid that the State could retaliate against her and the school for not using the national fiat currency. Posch started the donation campaign only on her social media, thus avoiding directly involving the school with the Bitcoin name.
“She began to understand that Bitcoin was real money when I took her to someone who trades Bitcoin,” Anita said. Upon receiving Zimbabwean dollars (ZWD) in exchange for the raised Bitcoin, she understood that there was real value in that “Monopoly money.” This principal currently saves Bitcoin to make more profit from the donations that the school receives and has learned to exchange her money without any problems.
People from Afghanistan and Venezuela Also Learn about Bitcoin
Marco Barbosa and Frereshteh Forough have had to teach Venezuelan users and Afghan female students to understand and use cryptocurrencies. Barbosa has a decentralized market in UBIs, a type of insurance that beneficiaries can collect for usage and that third parties can finance through donations in cryptocurrencies.
Barbosa developed the platform on Celo, an Ethereum-inspired smart contract network. In this way, users can receive donations in a token format directly on their cell phones, that is, without intermediaries. Barbosa states that the biggest challenge was trying to explain to his users what these tokens were, especially those beneficiaries from Venezuela who needed to use that digital money daily.
“We told them that they were a kind of digital dollars,” with which they felt more familiar, since this fiat currency is in common use in Venezuela. However, the more comfortable they felt with the platform, the more they wanted to know about the money that they were handling. In this way, they gradually learned that these coins were tokens that they could exchange on a blockchain. “They also learned the concept of Bitcoin,” noted the creator of ImpactMarket.
When the beneficiaries had already incorporated the concepts into everyday use, it became easier for them to exchange their tokens and even buy cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin. Barbosa believes that knowledge is the basis of adoption and familiarity with cryptocurrencies will allow users to feel more confident when using them.
On the other hand, Frereshteh says that the idea of a non-physical currency shocked the Code to Inspire students. For her initiative, she worked with a group of Afghan and Iranian women who want to learn more about technology and coding. This was risky and costly as women’s rights are severely undermined in those countries. In addition to teaching about Bitcoin, the project receives donations in this cryptocurrency to stay afloat, but the beneficiaries have not found it easy to adapt to it.
Frereshteh notes that “it is sometimes difficult to exchange money” as there is not yet a market that offers different opportunities to exchange Bitcoin for national fiat currencies in Afghanistan. For that reason, it is even more difficult for donation recipients to understand how the cryptocurrency works. The additional fact that it is digital money makes it even more difficult to understand, says the entrepreneur.
“Teaching these women about Bitcoin and blockchain is the way to help them become financially independent and gain financial freedom,” argued the creator of Code to Inspire. Frereshteh says that they want to continue creating safe educational environments and believes that decentralized systems allow the opening of new schools with this characteristic. This story shows that, despite difficulties, Bitcoin continues to have a positive impact on social causes.
By Alexander Salazar