Micro-lending and Crypto Part 1: Perspectives on the Perfect Pairing

*This article is part of an ongoing series of contributions by AERUM’s strategic advisors.

It has been a decade of soul searching and self-reflection for the financial world. In the wake of the 2009 crisis, people began to question, in earnest, the great money men and their institutions. Grass-roots movements such as ‘Occupy Wall-Street’ voiced their discontent with a system that had shut out many, and all around the world people started to question the value and interests of the banking powerhouses.

The aftermath of the financial crisis also saw more constructive grass-roots movements in the form of a revived interest in Peer-to-Peer (P2P) solutions, and the removal of costly middle-men, aka. the institutions that had contributed to the crisis. Bitcoin and its core technology, blockchain, led the charge for the cryptocurrencies and tokens which are becoming increasingly popular as more and more industries find uses for these digital token economies.

Around the same time as the crash, a new concept for social entrepreneurship began to gather momentum, which would be picked up and carried by this renewed interest in P2P. It’s founder was Prof. Muhammad Yunus, the economist and visionary behind the Grameen Bank, who was recognized for his efforts in micro-finance and social…