Blockchain is Big, But the Social Implications are Bigger

Today, I want to talk about the social impact that blockchain is making in the world.

We saw blockchain technology take center stage in 2017. Blockchains and smart contracts are a really big innovation. If you haven’t already, you really should take the time to read the whitepapers for Bitcoin and Ethereum.

I have been familiar with Bitcoin for a number of years. I first found out about Bitcoin and received my first bitcoin in 2011. At the time, I was just getting started with a new startup, and followed it from afar.

In the United States, we may not appreciate how much of an impact Bitcoin has already had on the huge percentage of the world that is currently unbanked or underbanked. On the August 8, 2017 episode of the podcast “Unchained”, Roya Mahboob spoke about her first interactions with Bitcoin, which were vastly different than mine.

Roya spoke about being an entrepreneurial woman in Afghanistan with a mostly female staff. She encountered struggles with the lack of banking infrastructure and cultural inhibitors that made it difficult for her and her employees to hold onto their earned wages. A majority of the women that worked for Roya would be paid in cash because they lacked bank accounts. The men in their families would periodically confiscate or steal the earned wages from them. Once Roya started paying her employees in bitcoin, their family members could no longer take their money, allowing the women to save and purchase things they needed.

This is the day I knew that the blockchain innovation could be applied to have positive social impacts in new and powerful ways.

I highly recommend listening to the particular episode, it is very inspirational and informative of the power of cryptocurrencies. The accompanying Forbes article is also recommended.

Among the many upcoming projects that use blockchain to make a social impact in the world, here are a few that I would like to highlight along with our own project here at GigLabs.

BitPesa

I am listing BitPesa first because it is in the same vein as Roya’s story. BitPesa was also the subject of the first episode of the “Unchained” podcast. BitPesa is enabling B2B payments between Nigeria, Uganda, Tanzania, and Kenya with 85+ countries globally. This is solving a major pain point in African nations, where sending money between businesses and workers in China can take days with fees that range upward to 12%. BitPesa has enabled new businesses in Nigeria to do business with the US and China easily. You can learn more at www.bitpesa.co.

Patientory

This is a local organization here in Atlanta. We are inspired by their mission here locally. Patientory is revolutionizing how health records are stored and shared. Their goal is to move from the centralized way patient records are stored. Using a decentralized approach on a public blockchain, they are enabling the patient to have access to their records anywhere, anytime. They are doing this while taking a different approach to the storage of patient records. They split the records into smaller bits and store the data in the blockchain. Then, as a patient allows a healthcare provider access their records, it is readily available when needed. You can learn more about Patientory at www.patientory.com.

The Akshaya Patra Foundation

Akshaya Patra has a foundation that is responsible for feeding over 1.6 million children in India every day. Their mission to to ensure no child is prevented the ability to gain an education due to a lack of food. They recently partnered with Accenture to optimize their operations making their kitchens more efficient. They utilized IoT and blockchain to do more with less. This will enable them to provide more relief to the children in India. To learn more about their program, visit them at www.akshayapatra.org.

GigEx

This is our platform and so I will mention it here. We are providing a blockchain based platform enabling us to provide benefits to the Gig Economy. Currently, millions of workers clean houses, drive cars, and perform various gigs globally without a mechanism to save for retirement, health, and vacation. GigLabs intends to provide a way for these independent gig workers to not only attain these benefits, but to build applications upon our platform to facilitate others in their professions to take advantage of the GigEx platform. For more about what we are doing, visit us at www.giglabs.io.

Overstock CEO

Blockchain has inspired the likes of Patrick Byrne, CEO of Overstock, to improve the world. We had the pleasure of seeing him and others talk about their missions at the Miami Bitcoin Conference in January. Here is a video of Patrick Byrne speaking about lifting 5 billion people around the world out of poverty by giving them property rights enabled by the blockchain.

Blockchain technology and smart contracts are big innovations. They are having a profound, social impact on the world. The innovation and projects around the blockchain space will continue to enable everyday people to make a difference. Improving the world around us is what we at GigLabs are all about.