Crypto Currencies in Refugee Camps

I think it would be interesting to launch a daily use cryptocurrency as the primary currency in a refugee camp.

Mobile payments in Somalia (World Bank)

Refugee camps are unique in that they’re contained pseudo-states. Refugees arrive, become citizens of the camp, and proceed to operate within a contained economy for the duration of the time they’re there. The internal economy of the camp is usually based on meal stamp type vouchers. I think replacing the meal stamps with an internal camp currency would be beneficial for several reasons:

1. Camp citizens would have increased flexibility in how they manage value
2. Informal economies within the camp could develop, enabling entrepreneurs
3. Since every citizen would have a wallet, formal economies could develop with outside parties hiring people in the camp to complete tasks
4. Most valuably, when citizens leave the camp they could actually take whatever value they’ve accrued with them and convert it to any target currency

Implementation wise, I think it would be an ERC-20 token that’s minted by sending a Stablecoin into a smart contract and burned by the inverse.

An interesting philanthropic opportunity that would arise from this is anyone could send crypto into a secondary smart contract that then evenly distributes it into the wallets of every citizen of the camp — a near-zero cost method for donating directly to refugees.

This is an outline of an idea and brushes over a lot of complexity and implementation, but it seems interesting enough for the crypto community to allocate dollars toward piloting. I would love to hear from anyone that has thoughts!