Penge på internettet kan både være en fordel og en forbandelse, men hvad vil det nye betalingsmiddel i cyberspace – bitcoin – betyde for udviklingsbistand og nødhjælpsarbejde? Meningerne er stærkt delte – ligeså mange skeptikere som fortalere.
BANGKOK, 13 November 2014 (IRIN) – Meet Bitcoin: An encrypted digital currency (kodet internet møntfod) the value of which has fluctuated sharply in recent years. It does not exist physically, there is no authority that oversees it, and you need Internet access to manage it.
This might not sound like a formula for humanitarian success. However, experts say, Bitcoin offers important lessons for aid delivery in situations with weak (or destroyed) institutions.
For example, Bitcoin has been used in a small way to raise money for the Ebola response in Sierra Leone: Funds donated digitally were exchanged in the US and wired to NGOs on the ground.
“Bitcoin as a currency certainly offers potential for the aid industry as a collection site. But as far as distribution of funds is concerned, it won’t work,” Ignacio Mas, a senior research fellow at Oxford’s Said Business School, told IRIN, adding:
“People want a currency they can use. In developing countries, that means local currency. If there is no local Bitcoin ecosystem in places we are trying to send aid, then what would Bitcoin aid distribution do except to replicate the Western Union problem it is trying to solve?”
A system of how money is shared
However, Mas insisted, Bitcoin is not just a type of money, but a system of how money gets shared:
“It is a currency, which is complicated and volatile (svingende) and probably not going to work out in the long run. But it is also a protocol, a way in which we exchange money peer-to-peer.”
In a paper entitled “Why you should care about Bitcoin – even if you don’t believe in it”, Mas argued that the five-year-old virtual currency’s “key engineering elements offer us the possibility of imagining a radically different approach for architecting electronic payment systems”.
For aid distribution, such “radical” ideas could influence the way money is transferred to (and between) people in need. Electronic cash transfers – often by SMS – have become an increasingly popular aid tool in recent years.
A 2014 World Bank and Gates Foundation report argued that the “rapid development and extension of digital platforms and digital payments can provide the speed, security, transparency and cost efficiency needed to increase financial inclusion.”
One third of all World Food Programme (WFP) food assistance is now given in the form of cash or vouchers (værdikuponer). The Cash Learning Partnership’s (CaLP) “Cash Atlas” lists 592 projects with more than 23 million beneficiaries around the world.
Ripe with rip-offs
But cash transfers – from agencies to people, governments to people, or people to people – are rife with rip-offs and complications. In short, they depend on institutions that do not necessarily work in their favour.
For example, in some parts of Africa where cash transfer infrastructure is dominated by one or two companies, up to 12 percent of the money is lost to transfer fees. And cash transfers via SMS have been accused of cutting costs for aid agencies, but shifting risks onto vulnerable recipients.
This is where Bitcoin (or other crypto-currencies) – which have only negligible associated costs and require no institutions – could spark change. “Bitcoin will have a huge impact on the world – on how money moves around,” said Mas.
According to Andrej Verity, an information management officer with the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), “Things will begin to change when power [electricity] becomes more predictable in emergencies, and technology, like smart phones, become part of the standard aid package”.
“When such services are in place, we may be ripe for a crypto-currency dedicated to humanitarian aid.”
For humanitarians, digital currencies such as Bitcoin raise questions of effectiveness, efficiency, accountability, and sustainability. But the jury is still out on Bitcoin’s benefits. IRIN looks at the issues.
What is Bitcoin?
The US Department of the Treasury calls Bitcoin a “decentralized virtual currency”.
The label highlights its key aspects: it is a currency with value, and it exists completely and solely online. Or, as a US public radio podcast, Planet Money, explained:
“Everybody who uses Bitcoin has a digital wallet. And when you buy something you send your coins to someone else’s wallet, [for example, an online merchant or another person].”
Each coin is encrypted and unique, meaning exchanges cannot be duplicated.
Dozens of other electronic money transfer programmes exist. However, Bitcoin is unique in some important ways.
Mas explained: “Bitcoin is different from all other electronic money transfer systems because it allows secure peer-to-peer exchanges.”
Said Mas: “Think about it in terms of a traditional cash exchange: if I have a debt to settle with you for 10 US dollar, I can give you a bill for the 10 dollar and the debt is settled. The [government] embeds technology in that physical cash which makes it such that it cannot be copied – and we trust that, so the exchange is valid between us.”
WFP and MasterCard
Concerns change, however, when the transaction is virtual (på nettet).
When in 2012 WFP (FNs Fødevareprogram) launched a partnership with MasterCard, the agency emphasized that the company’s “payment and technology expertise will help WFP to refine and improve its systems that deliver food vouchers via mobile phones or banking cards to people without regular access to banks or financial services.”
This kind of expertise is necessary to provide security to financial exchanges. Explained Mas: “What a bank or transfer service company has to offer is the guarantee that the transfer is real and not duplicated digitally.”
However, he added: “The problem with these big institutions is that they have no interest in helping the poor. The Bitcoin protocol [method by which currency is exchanged], by ensuring these exchanges cannot be duplicated, gives peer-to-peer financial transactions that same kind of security.”
Why use digital currency instead of hard currency?
Læs videre på
http://www.irinnews.org/report/100831/crypto-currencies-and-the-aid-industry
