GiveCrypto Monthly Update — March 2020: Phase 4 Transfers Started, How to Respond to COVID-19 and Staying Focused
We formally launched Phase 4 of the Venezuelan Ambassador Program on March 27th. This phase will feature a Randomized Controlled Trial that compares the impact of direct transfers of cash with direct transfers of crypto.
This trial is unique. To our knowledge, this is the first time that an RCT is being conducted on a cryptocurrency project. We are sharing the results of the RCT in real-time on our website. Most other RCTs guard their data until the trial is over and share after it has been reviewed and summarized. We are sharing the following three categories of data as they are collected: demographics, transfers, and impact. Note that all data will be hidden from view of the participants to avoid contaminating the study.
Demographic data
This will include high level descriptions of our participants, such as age, gender, and education. We are also using some of this data to inform our random allocation (i.e. stratified random sampling) of participants across different arms of the trial — cash, control and crypto. Below are examples of the dashboards that we will be sharing with demographic data.
Transfer data
This will show how funds are moving between participants, stores, and cash-out partners. A nice side effect of using cryptocurrency is that we can query the blockchain to see exactly where the funds are going. For example, the chart below (from a previous phase) shows that 73.9% of participant funds were spent at stores and 21.3% were converted to cash. As we collect more transactional data, we will update the charts on our site.
Impact data
The main point of the RCT is to measure how our funds impact the lives of our participants. We are looking at three categories of impact: food security, psychological well being and household consumption. We collect this data by asking participants questions before, during and after the trial. Here is an example of the kind of chart we can expect to see from these surveys. Note that this is sample data and we won’t have our first comparative impact data until late April.
Pivot for COVID-19?
Pardon the understatement, but it has been impossible to ignore COVID-19 over the past few weeks/months. Being a charity, we can’t help but wonder if there is something we can do to improve the situation. We don’t harbor any super-hero delusions and understand that long-term solutions will revolve around diagnostics, therapeutics and vaccine development. These are hard-tech problems that will be solved by bio-medical professionals.
But, is there some way that we could leverage our resources? I would argue that our resources consist of the ability to develop software and offer financial incentives. It is possible that we might be able to combine them to encourage people to behave in a manner that mitigates the impact of the virus.
We actually did some brainstorming and identified a few interesting ideas. My personal favorite was a service that provided financial incentives for people to shelter in place. A much better version of this idea was recently launched by SnapChat.
We ultimately decided to stay in our lane and focus on direct crypto transfers. Our early experiments taught us that we have the highest likelihood of helping in places where money is broken. And, due to certain fiscal and monetary policies currently being implemented, it is possible that money could soon be broken in more places. We will continue to develop our platform; which automates the targeting, distribution and tracking of direct crypto transfers. And we will be ready to use it to help more people, should that be necessary.
Additionally, we will monitor potential second and third order effects. Nobody is yet sure what these might be, but it is possible that the crisis has hastened the reorganization of financial infrastructure. We are obviously biased, but we believe that cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology will play a larger role in finance 2.0.
Maintaining Focus in a Crisis
Like everybody else, we have struggled to remain productive while sheltering in place with a constant barrage of disturbing news. This is complicated by the fact that schools are closed and child care responsibilities have increased for many. Being totally transparent, this has been destabilizing and I personally feel like I’ve been quite unproductive for a good portion of March. I am learning to adjust to a new routine and hope to return to previous levels of productivity soon. I am sharing this because I was probably too hard on myself while adjusting. I hope you can take some consolation if you are feeling similar anxiety.
Staying Connected
We love to hear from our supporters outside of our updates and events. Please follow along on Twitter and our blog for updates on our programs.
