GiveCrypto Year End Report: Where We’ve Been & Where We’re Going

GiveCrypto’s mission is to financially empower people by distributing cryptocurrency. We’re dedicated to helping people in developing countries gain more control over their economic circumstances. We believe a combination of crypto and an approach rooted in experimenting, iterating, and learning is the way to do it.

The early stages of this methodology have been promising.

Since 2018, we’ve distributed $303k to more than 5,600 people in need across the world. This averages out to about $54 per person.

To date, this money has gone to:

• Bangladesh: helping 114 refugees of the Rohingya genocide
• United States: helping nine survivors of domestic abuse and their children
• Afghanistan: helping eight female entrepreneurs
• Lebanon & Greece: helping 150 Syrian refugees in multiple locations
• Venezuela: helping more than 2,900 people fight economic instability through our Venezuelan Ambassador Program
• Other: helping more than 2,000 people in need across Africa, Latin America, and the Middle East

We spent most of 2018 and 2019 experimenting with the direct distribution of crypto via pilot programs across the world. Our goal was twofold: to help people in need and encourage utility phase crypto activity.

As 2019 comes to a close, we’re taking the opportunity to look back on our progress. We’re focused on scaling our direct cash transfer program and experimenting with the ways we can leverage crypto technology to provide financial infrastructure and economic empowerment in emerging markets.

What we’ve done so far and why

At GiveCrypto, we firmly believe that cryptocurrency is a transformative technology. While it’s still early in its history, cryptocurrency has the potential to drive economic growth, make existing financial systems more efficient, and create a more open financial ecosystem.

Many early investors in bitcoin know that cryptocurrency can be used to build wealth. We want to give them a way to help improve the lives of those in need, too.

We’re still dedicated to the goal we set in 2018: to hold and distribute crypto directly to those in need. While we’re still in the early days and it’s unclear exactly how things will play out, we’re optimistic. Based on our early experiments and experiences, we’ve developed three hypotheses of how cryptocurrencies can help people in need in developing countries.

First: We believe that crypto can enable a more effective way of giving via direct cash transfers. Second: We think that, as people become more comfortable using cryptocurrencies, we can begin building crypto-native financial infrastructure in emerging markets. Third: Development of these cryptoeconomies will drive outsized economic growth in our target communities.

So far, crypto has proven to be an extremely useful way to directly transfer funds. We’ve found the most traction with our efforts in Venezuela, where we’ve recruited local ambassadors to help directly distribute crypto to people in need. These participants then use the funds to buy daily necessities at crypto-friendly vendors or cash out their funds for fiat currency.

To support this program and track the impact of crypto donations, we’ve developed software that can make us more efficient. This includes three main products:

1. Coinbase Wallet Lite: our streamlined version of the Coinbase Wallet that is compatible with older Android phones
2. The GiveCrypto app: a mobile web app that helps us onboard ambassadors and recipients, collect program surveys, and process receipts from purchases
3. The GiveCrypto admin dashboard: a central admin hub that facilitates the management of our program and helps prevent fraud

Crypto has proved invaluable for helping us deliver cash to those in need in hard-to-access places, but we believe we can go further in 2020.

While we’re applying the lessons learned in 2019, we’re keeping an open mind about what this kind of outreach will look like in the future. This could include small business loans to help support local entrepreneurs, lump-sum payments to help families cover large, one-time costs, or other models we’ll discover along the way.

Early cryptocurrency investors know this kind of large-scale financial disruption takes a leap of faith. They’ve already done it once to build their wealth, and we’re asking them to leap again to make the world a better place through the unique promise of crypto.

Thankfully, we’re not shooting in the dark. Our early programs have shown us the promise of using crypto to help give people access to day-to-day necessities.

We’re excited to see how our early lessons and methodology help us reach even more people in need.

What’s on the horizon for GiveCrypto.

In 2020, we’ll focus on growing our impact beyond Venezuela and discovering new ways crypto can be used to drive economic growth.

This growth will focus on four main priorities:

1. Scale: Increase our impact by reaching 25,000 people in need across the world.
2. Verify: Publish the results of our Randomized Control Trial (RCT) in Venezuela.
3. Innovate: Experiment with sustainable aid models.
4. Automate: Improve our platform to automate the targeting, distribution, and tracking of our programs.

These four priorities will increase the distance each dollar from our donors can go. We’re working on using the technology behind cryptocurrency to increase operational efficiency and impact.

To ensure GiveCrypto can continue to bring the promise of cryptocurrency to emerging markets, we are trying to raise $2.5 million before the end of the year. $1 million will go toward our operational expenses, and $1.5 million will be distributed directly to participants.

We’re optimistic about our ability to meet these goals, but we need your help. You’ve proven wealth can be built with cryptocurrency; now help us prove good can be done with it, too.

Cryptocurrency can empower millions of people around the world and drive innovation in emerging markets like never before. Join us and donate today to help people in need benefit from a decentralized financial system.