Bitcoin is often touted as something that can potentially move the world in the right direction. It allegedly offers people financial freedom and more control over their monetary decisions, and the world’s number one digital currency by market cap appears to be producing solid results in foreign markets and nations.
How Is Bitcoin Helping People Around the World?
One case where the currency is performing acts of good is in both China and North Korea. Not long ago, North Korean defector Yeonmi Park spoke at the Miami 2022 Bitcoin Conference and talked about her journey in leaving her home country. She also detailed the horrors of many other women who are not as lucky in that they leave North Korea hoping for better lives only to wind up in China. While there, they are undocumented, and risk being sold into slavery.
Many people are sending bitcoin to these women directly or to organizations designed to help them escape their ugly fates. Park stated at the conference:
Most North Korean escapees end up in China and find it difficult to get help, so when North Korean girls arrive in China, many are sold as sex slaves. When these women have children with Chinese men, the children are unregistered and become stateless, and there are up to 300,000 North Korean women in China and up to one million unregistered children. Church groups use bitcoin to supply the children and mothers with education and to help them find a way out of China, so we can empower these children and women with bitcoin.
She further stated that people in North Korea could have easily benefited from bitcoin earlier, such as in 2009. During that time, the country’s currency was seriously devalued and experienced heavy dips in its strength which resulted in poverty and starvation levels reaching new heights throughout the nation.
Not long ago, Russia invaded its neighbor Ukraine. This resulted in crypto donations rushing in to help the Ukrainian military to ensure soldiers had the supplies and weapons they needed to defend their country. Thus far, as much as $50 million in crypto donations have been received.
Ukraine Is Really Benefiting
Alex Bornyakov – the deputy minister of digital transformation in Ukraine – commented on social media:
The Ministry of Digital Transformation initiated creating the Crypto Fund of Ukraine and set up with a partnership of Kyiv-based crypto exchange KUNA, which is providing us with tech infrastructure. We were able to raise more than $50m in crypto assets and transferred these funds into fiat currency.
In addition, we have also seen the Russian people – who have nothing to do with the recent invasion – gain traction in the crypto world as well given that they are now using crypto ensure their wealth is stable and sturdy during a time when the ruble – the nation’s currency – has fallen into the doldrums.
