An Example of Cryptocurrency in Disaster Management
In order to elucidate how cryptocurrency can help mitigate disasters, a conceptual understanding of how cryptocurrency works must be illustrated. Cryptocurrency is simply a digital money or currency such as Bitcoin, Etherium, XRP, EOS, Bitcoin cash, Zcash, Litecoin etc. (intangible money). As there are traditional currencies — fiat money or simply paper money (tangible) such as dollars, bahts, pounds, for example, cryptocurrency is a decentralized digital currency transferred between peers through public ledger, which contains one’s account number or key, known only to that person.
To conceptualize how cryptocurrency works, say Mr. A wants to transfer a cryptocurrency, either Bitcoin or Ethereum to Mr. B. Then, Mr. A forwards the desired amount to Mr. B with a given key number of which only Mr. A knows, and so, the transaction is done. Transfering Bitcoin to traditional currency is based on the value of Bitcoin at a particular transaction time.
Understanding disaster management in simple terms, is the process of responding to a major failure or letdown. Disaster management could be natural or manmade. Incorporating cryptocurrency to managing and mitigating disasters, is attainable. For example, people who own a cryptocurrency have tangible money. Imagine when everyone owns a crypto, in disastrous situations where one’s house may be submerged in water due to heavy rain, or flooding, and a possible amount of money is required to fix the damage. In a situation where one might not have enough tangible money to pay for the damages, and therefore is liable to substitute payment with cryptocurrency, and get the problem rectified. This approach of redeeming one’s financial crisis using cryptocurrency, however, is applicable to one who had been in the hospital for some time, although recovered, but hadn’t enough tangible money to pay for the hospital bills.
In summary, the ideation of a digital money has been one of many innovations emanated by the potentiality of the human intelligence. The development of the technology, in fact, had assured the human race the preparedness of more sophisticated technologies to come. In other words, If the utilization of cryptocurrency can impact the conducts of businesses in the circumference of technological cum economic advancements, its’ graceful innovation, can as well, be used to fill up sociologically-challenging gap to managing disasters in human level.
