Yes. It can. There are thousands of new applications that companies are applying DLT (Distributed Ledger Technology) to. They range from smart contracts that hold government officials accountable, to digitizing ownership of almost everything that has value in the economy. Of all of those applications, one of the most exciting is the ability to help lift millions of people out of poverty.
In a recent article on Financial Sense, University of North Carolina scholar of business and technology, Nir Kshetri noted,
“Major aid agencies, nonprofits, and startup companies are working to extend blockchain systems across the developing world to help poor people around the world get easier access to banks for loans or to protect their savings.”
“Protect Their Savings”
There are many challenges that poor people face around the world. DLT will certainly help solve many of them, including:
- Lowering the cost of sending money to family across borders.
- Providing humanitarian aid more efficiently and bypassing corruption.
- Unlocking people’s true potential.
One of the most important, however, will be to help these people protect something many of them have never had – savings. Currencies of poorer nations have tended to be more unstable than those in the developed world. What is occurring now in Argentina is one example.
How might the plight of the citizens be improved if they had a means to allocate just a tiny bit of their savings into physical gold or silver in order to protect it? The answer is, it could be life changing.
FinTech is transforming the world in more ways than we realize. As it does, it will not only improve our lives by bringing efficiencies to our banking experience and access to a broad category of investment assets. It will improve the lives of the poor, oppressed, and disadvantaged of the world. One way this can be accomplished is to enable them to have access to gold and silver to protect their new ability to save.