Bee this year’s Oslo Freedom Forumgigabrain Lyn Alden has argued that bitcoin is now liquid enough to be used in a human rights context, a compelling argument that I agree with.
Bitcoin, which now has a market cap of over $1.2 trillion, is less volatile than it was a decade ago and can now be more easily used to help those who have historically been financially disenfranchised. (The larger the market cap of an asset, the less volatile the asset’s price becomes. When Bitcoin had a much lower market cap in its early days, it was not uncommon to see lose more than 80% of its value in crashes. For this reason, it would have been much more difficult to use it in a human rights context at the time.)
Here are some examples of how Bitcoin is currently being used for human rights purposes:
- Bitcoin Dada teaches African women how to invest in and use Bitcoin. Many women in Africa live in patriarchal societies in which women are not allowed to own property. Bitcoin helps them subvert such rules, allowing them to save on the most difficult asset humanity has ever known, while few are the wiser.
- Bitcoin two is a Bitcoin circular economy and community center in Ghana where community members learn not only what Bitcoin is and how to use it, but also skills they can use to get jobs where they can earn in Bitcoin. This program is especially relevant in a country where the traditional currency was the currency worst performing currency in the world in 2022 and continues to depreciate against the US dollar.
A #Bitcoin Education Center is established in "Bitcoin two" to teach children and provide mentorship to individuals on how to use and accept Bitcoin payments in Agbozume.
⚡️Your help is appreciated as we strive to achieve these goals. cc @geiserfonds https://t.co/Enb7767ZVN pic.twitter.com/y7ex7Mb6wP— Bitcoin Two (@bitcoin_two) June 19, 2023
- Lyudmyla KozlovskaChairman of the Open Dialogue Foundationsomeone who has been debanked by dictators itself has emphasized to regulators in the United States and Europe that Bitcoin is a money and financial network that serves as a last resort for pro-democracy activists living under authoritarian regimes and that the right to use it must be protected. She argues that one of the first steps in the playbook of dictators today is to cut off dissidents from the traditional financial system, with said dissidents leaving Bitcoin as their primary means of transacting.
The work that these people, programs and institutions and many others like them did during the previous Bitcoin era paved the way for the Empowerment Era – the fifth era of Bitcoin, the era in which it will become synonymous with the term “human rights ‘. ”
That said, this won’t be without challenges.
High Bitcoin base chain fees will unsettle certain users, pushing them to adopt Layer 2 solutions such as Lightning and Lightning extensions such as cashuntraceable versions of sats that can be shipped virtually free of charge.
Companies like It covers have developed a super app for the Global South that gives users access to Lightning, ECASH and other freedom technology They are drunk allows residents of several African countries to securely transact with bitcoin using feature phones (non-smartphones). (Machankura is also working on turning feature phones into Bitcoin hardware wallets.)
Layer 2 solutions will not be perfect and there will be tradeoffs with each. But even taking into account the imperfections of the technologies that make Bitcoin more useful, they still provide many around the world with access to a parallel financial system, serving as a hedge for the existing monetary and financial systems.
As new challenges arise, I have no doubt that organizations like the Human Rights Foundation will continue bring activists and educators together with developers and entrepreneurs to meet these challenges and bring bitcoin – the people’s money – to those who need it most in this age of empowerment.
This article is a To take. The opinions expressed are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of BTC Inc or Bitcoin Magazine.