Education
Human Rights Foundation to grant 425M satoshis as part of its Bitcoin Development Fund
Various educational and developmental Bitcoin projects from around the world have now been granted funding, according to the Foundation.
The Human Rights Foundation announced on Tuesday that it intends to distribute 425 million satoshis — the smallest divisible unit of a Bitcoin — to various contributors as a part of its ongoing Bitcoin Development Fund.
Launched in May 2020, the Bitcoin Development Fund is primarily focused on improving the Bitcoin network’s privacy, usability and security. The Foundation said that it will focus this particular round of grants on expanding Bitcoin education and translation as well as Bitcoin core, lightning and wallet development.
According to the organization’s press release, it will divide these grants between a number of recipients, including developers Jarol Rodriguez, Farida Nabourema, Roya Mahboob, Anita Posch and Meron Estefanos. Several projects will also receive a grant from the Foundation, including the Sparrow Bitcoin Wallet, Boltz Exchange, the Summer of Bitcoin internship program, Blockchain translation team Exonumia, and the Blockchain Commons development group.
The Foundation also noted that it had given special thanks to CMS holdings, the Gemini Opportunity Fund and Jameson Lopp for their contributions.
Back in Jan 2021, the Human Rights Foundation made headlines when it urged Time magazine readers not to demonize Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. At the time, the Foundation’s chief strategy officer Alex Gladstein said:
“Bitcoin is neutral like cash, and can’t discriminate between good and bad [...] Some extremists use these tools. They also use mobile phones, email and the internet.”
The exec went on to warn that turning away from burgeoning financial tools like Bitcoin could lead to a bigger police state in the U.S. fueled by “mass surveillance to fight extremism.”
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10 women who used crypto to make a difference in 2021
These 10 inspiring women made things happen using crypto and blockchain in 2021, one block at a time.
This year, new research showed that there’s still a long way to go before there is gender parity in the crypto and blockchain space. WEF’s April Global Gender Gap Report 2021 found that it will take close to 135.6 years to close the gender gap due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
However, that hasn’t stopped these women who used blockchain technology and cryptocurrency to tackle a whole range of social issues ranging from girls’ education in developing countries to the wealth gap in black communities in the United States.
In no particular order, these 10 women are changing the world using crypto one block at a time.
Tavonia Evans
Tavonia Evans is the founder and lead engineer of GUAP Coin, which she created to help close the wealth gap and support black-owned businesses in the United States. Despite being hospitalized with COVID-19 and facing sweeping funding cuts, Evans says that her company accomplished more this year than ever before.
“We’ve onboarded hundreds of women of color into the Masternode space, an area of crypto that is largely male-dominated,” she told Cointelegraph. 70% of GUAP nodes are owned by women of color.
“We’ve sparked awareness about crypto among a population with less access and education in crypto and finance — and we continue to do so.”
This year, the company onboarded its first brick-and-mortar merchants. It also launched the xGUAP wrapper on Binance Smart Chain.
Lisa Wade
Lisa Wade was the 2021 recipient of Blockchain Australia’s Gender and Diversity Leader of the Year award, which recognized her work advocating for women and LGBTIQ+ people in the blockchain industry.
She is the founder of NEOMI, an investing ecosystem that connects charity entrepreneurs looking to raise capital with investors looking for authentic impact investments. Wade explained to Cointelegraph:
“NEOMI has a lens on our theory of change, which supports LGBTI and female entrepreneurs.”
Wade is also the chair of NAB Pride and pioneered the Australian bank’s “Rainbow Women” initiative, which gives LGBTIQ+ women a space to speak about issues that are holding them back on career development in the finance sector.
She also continued her work in environmental activism, co-creating a blockchain initiative called Project Carbon which tokenizes voluntary carbon credits.
Olayinka Odeniran
Olayinka Odeniran is the founder and Chairwoman of Black Women Blockchain Council (BWBC), which is working toward increasing the number of black female blockchain developers to half a million by 2030.
Over the past year, the BWBC partnered with blockchain software company Consensys to help African people throughout the globe get involved in crypto.
She also launched a room on social audio app Clubhouse called “What The Hell is Blockchain” and a community site where members can network and learn about everything from nonfungible tokens (NFTs) to decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs).
In case this wasn’t keeping her busy enough, she also released a social impact NFT collection CyberMermaid through ocean conservation nonprofit The Dope Sea.
In 2022, Odeniran plans to host a month-long event for Women’s History Month in March and release a new program to teach African women about NFTs and blockchain.
Maliha Abidi
Maliha Abidi is a Pakistani-American author and internationally acclaimed visual artist. She founded ‘Women Rise NFTs’ this year. The collection of 10,000 NFTs represent diverse women from around the world including activists, artists, scientists and coders.
The collection has been featured on the front page of Rarible and at DCentral Miami. Abidi also had an artist residency during Art Basel in Miami.
According to Abidi, so far, 2,350 NFTs from the collection amounting to over 150 Ether (ETH), around $591,000, have been sold to 1,200 unique buyers including some big names like Randi Zuckerberg and Gary Vee. 10% of the total profits from the project will be donated to charities supporting women and children.
Abidi’s major project for next year will be the creation of the world’s first metaverse school for marginalized children from around the world.
Lavinia Osbourne
Lavinia Osbourne is the founder and host of Women in Blockchain Talks (WiBT), which is a female-led educational platform in the United Kingdom where women can network and learn about blockchain. She told Cointelegraph:
“Getting started in this revolutionary space is key to change and adoption, so Women in Blockchain Talks wants to make this as easy as possible for people — women and marginalized groups in particular — to do just that.”
This year, WiBT launched the 50k women into Blockchain by 2023 campaign, which Osbourne explained to Cointelegraph will “show that blockchain is for everyone as well as highlight the different pathways” to get involved in the space.
Osbourne also founded the upcoming female-centric Crypto Kweens NFT Marketplace, which is currently being built on the Rarible protocol.
WiBT introduced a Middle East ambassador to expand their international reach to women and marginalized groups wanting to learn about blockchain technology with translated versions of their educational material.
Jen Greyson
Jen Greyson is a Utah-based advocate of women’s empowerment through cryptocurrency and a board member for Kerala Blockchain Academy (KBA) in India.
KBA trains women in STEM and blockchain to become leaders in the space. In 2021, it introduced several new blockchain courses, including two free foundation programs. The Academy trained close to 7,000 students this year, with over 6,000 students enrolling into the foundation programs in less than four months.
She told Cointelegraph: “The blockchain training program aimed to equip start-ups and individuals with the requisite knowledge, skills and attitude” needed to crack into the sector. Greyson added further:
“While my home state of Utah is languishing in even getting computers in every school for every student, across the globe, KBA did this in 2021 while navigating a pandemic.”
This year, the Academy’s vaccine traceability solution Immunochain was selected for a government health program in Kerala. KBA also developed a blockchain-powered multi-party document signing and verification system called Sign-A-Doc.
In 2022, Greyson will be launching an NFT podcast and an academy “focused on bringing more crypto education to the feminine.”
Manasi Vora
In May this year, Manasia Vora co-founded the Komorebi Collective on Syndicate, becoming the first investment DAO focused on funding female and non-binary crypto founders.
She is also the founder of the non-profit Women in Blockchain (WIB), which aims to provide a space for women to mentor each other about blockchain and crypto. “We aim to connect women to thought leaders in this space to inspire, collaborate and encourage others,” she said in a LinkedIn post. On Dec. 15, WIB tweeted:
“Crypto is about shared abundance and shared ownership. But this isn’t possible if the underrepresented communities are not included in the building, in the design, in the decision-making!”
Roya Mahboob
Roya Mahboob is not only an internationally-recognized activist but was also one of very few female tech CEOs in Afghanistan before being forced to flee in September this year when the Taliban took over control of the country.
She is the founder and CEO of Afghan Citadel Software Company (ACSC), where over half the employees are women. Because many Afghan women are unable to access a traditional bank account, she pays her employees in Bitcoin. In an August interview with CoinDesk, she said:
“If young people can learn about computers, they can learn about Bitcoin. And now everybody wants to learn how to access Bitcoin. They need to.”
She is also a board member and president of the Digital Citizen Fund (DCF), a non-profit aiming to educate girls and women from developing countries about technology and finance.
Mahboob also sits on the advisery board of Ashford University’s Forbes School of Business & Technology and recently created EdyEdy, a platform that helps young people from developing countries learn practical digital literacy skills.
Cleve Mesidor
Cleve Mesidor is the author of My Quest for Justice in Politics & Crypto, and a former appointee of the Obama administration.
She was appointed as public policy adviser at Blockchain Association in March this year and is a Mayoral Appointee for the DC Innovations and Technology Inclusion Council.
She is also the founder of the National Policy Network of Women of Color in Blockchain, and LOGOS, a social platform on the blockchain for activists.
Alakanani Itireleng
The Botswanan “Bitcoin Lady” Alakanani Itireleng is the CEO of the Satoshi Centre, which educates members of her community on how they can make money from crypto and blockchain technology.
The self-funded center is in the process of developing an incubator where startups will be able to network with potential sponsors or mentors.
She has campaigned for the Bank of Botswana to regulate and legitimize Bitcoin as a legal currency and is also developing a local crypto wallet that will be able to directly connect to regular ATMs.
In a July interview with Forbes, Itireleng said, “I was feeling that there’s something about Bitcoin that is unique, that is different from normal fiat money.” She added further: “I always call it a currency of love.”
Make a wish: New Year’s resolutions from crypto industry insiders
The new year is just over a week away, so folks all across the crypto world are thinking ahead to what 2022 will bring to the crypto industry and the world.
As the new year rapidly approaches, people are thinking about what they can do to make 2022 even better than 2021. With so much anticipation for cryptocurrency in the coming year from government policymakers and market action, it’s no wonder that some in the crypto industry have ambitious resolutions for the new year with how they will help to shape the industry for the better.
National governments have taken steps to increase the global adoption of blockchain technology right up to the end of 2021. Late in the year, governments from Australia, Kazakhstan, Brazil and the Eastern Caribbean launched, or made public, their plans regarding central bank digital currencies (CBDCs). The United States Senate heard testimonies from crypto company executives in December, and Thailand’s government vowed to issue a regulatory framework for crypto by 2022.
As for the bull market, nobody truly knows what will happen. Some analysts believe that the four-year market cycle has been broken, indicating that the bull run will continue well into 2022. However, bearish signals persist despite the strength of Ether (ETH) and altcoins, making a stronger case for the argument that this time around, things are different.
Several industry participants shared their thoughts with Cointelegraph regarding their New Year's resolutions. They range from education and inspiration to healthcare concerns. They even floated ideas of a global metaverse GDP.
Bobby Ong, CoinGecko
Bobby Ong, co-founder of CoinGecko, also shared his resolutions for the new year. As with others in the industry, Ong feels that education is one of the keys to crypto adoption. He told Cointelegraph that his greatest ambition is to see the industry use education to help users keep their digital assets safe.
His concerns regarding user security have genuine merit considering that so far in December 2021, there have been over $149 million in losses due to security breaches at Grim Finance, Badger DAO, MonoX, Visor Finance and AscendEX. At the time of publishing, there is still about a week left in the month for other breaches to be revealed. Ong said:
“I hope to see more people educating themselves on crypto security in 2022. Too many new users have lost cryptocurrencies and NFTs due to bad security practices and I hope more projects and companies will educate their users on best practices.”
He went on about how he believes that crypto users — both new and experienced — need access to as much information and education as they can get: “Our motivation in doing this is to help users make sense of the crypto world and we hold the view that anything that can be tokenized will be tokenized.”
Yat Siu, Animoca Brands
Animoca co-founder and chairman Yat Siu voiced his aim to see the metaverse niche mature in 2022. His lofty goals for the new year include bringing metaverses onto a global scale of recognition which could have evolutionary implications for the nonfungible token, or NFT, market as well.
It may be safe to say that the Metaverse have come closer to mainstream adoption than they ever had before thanks, in no small part, to Mark Zuckerberg and Meta. Siu and Animoca, one of the biggest investment firms in the NFT and metaverse space, are counting on the continued expansion of those markets.
Animoca had a fantastic 2021, especially in the last few months of the year when the firm increased its treasury value five-fold from $2.9 billion in September to $15.9 billion by the end of November. As the latest winner of Deloitte Hong Kong’s Fast Technology award, Animoca may have the momentum needed to continue its success in 2022. Siu said his New Year's resolution was:
“To help in constructing an open metaverse with such a significant GDP that closed metaverses are forced open in much the same way that free trade opened up the global economy. Where we are no longer digitally defined as ‘users’ but as metaverse citizens with true digital ownership.”
Pradeep Goel, Solve.Care
Next, Solve.Care blockchain-based healthcare platform CEO Pradeep Goel shared his thoughts on what can be done to improve the crypto space in 2022. The telehealth field, which Solve.Care has one foot in, saw a 63-fold increase in utilization through 2021, according to the United States Department of Health and Human Services.
Especially for geriatric patients and those with low mobility who cannot easily make regular doctor visits, the utility of telehealth services was fleshed out over the past 20 months through the COVID-19 pandemic. Solve’s position as a crypto-telehealth leader aided in the launch of its Global Telehealth Exchange and various other services, which Goel hopes will help users obtain the health services they need. Goel told Cointelegraph:
“It is my wish that in 2022, we will see greater utility and adoption of cryptocurrencies, especially for the healthcare sector. Not only can they be used as a payment currency, but they can be programmed to streamline and facilitate seamless interactions between stakeholders like patients, healthcare providers, government agencies and insurance companies.”
Jen Buakew, To The Moon Lab
Jen Buakaew, founder of growth accelerator To the Moon Lab, hopes that 2022 will make the crypto space more accessible for laypeople who want to explore its possibilities. In her experience at crypto conferences, many people become befuddled by the NFTs that sell for millions of dollars and the technical jargon tossed around by industry experts. She said, “These things usually mean nothing to people besides making them feel that crypto success is unattainable.”
In her view, people interested in joining the industry as traders, entrepreneurs, or professionals don’t have an adequate support system in place to help them reach their goals should they choose to join the industry. That lack of support is what she thinks keeps some individuals from contributing their valuable input in the first place. Buakaew said:
“My New Year's resolution is to inspire as many people as I can to get themselves into crypto by showing them the simplest ways where they can benefit from being part of the decentralized economy. I would like to change this narrative or the mindsets of the ordinary people, especially those in the less fortunate demographics to 'if Jen can do it, well then so can we.’”
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The Taliban will never understand crypto, according to founder of LEARN Afghanistan
Pashtana Durrani described the Taliban as "people who were fighting in rural and very mountainous regions" who don't have the proper background for modern financial literacy.
Pashtana Durrani, the founder of an organization working to make education available to women and girls across Afghanistan as the country remains under Taliban rule, said the Islamic fundamentalist group has poor financial literacy, especially when it comes to crypto.
In a Wednesday interview with political commentator Tommy Vietor from Pod Save the World, LEARN Afghanistan founder Pashtana Durrani said the international community — particularly the United States — should consider removing the sanctions imposed on Afghanistan and unfreezing funds controlled by foreign governments. According to Durrani, limiting foreign aid to Afghanistan through nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and other entities gives the Taliban an advantage, as opposed to using the latest technology, including cryptocurrency.
“When I say unfreeze the assets, send it in cryptocurrency — the Taliban will never understand it,” said Durrani. “Send it to a private bank — they will never be able to access it [...] Taliban don't have bank accounts. Taliban were people who were fighting in rural and very mountainous regions. They had no time to go to a bank, fill out the forms and have that.”
Following the almost immediate takeover by the Taliban in August, Afghanistan has faced a number of crises. In addition to the threat imposed by having armed religious extremists in control of the government, millions of Afghans are facing food insecurity and economic hardship. Many residents are still unable to withdraw cash from banks as the international community attempts to impose restrictions aimed at hurting the Taliban.
“The sanction is only hurting the people who had savings in the bank accounts. It’s hurting the teachers, it's hurting the students, it's hurting all those people who actually worked in the past two decades — it's never going to hurt Taliban.”
Many nonprofit organizations helping Afghan refugees relocate to foreign countries have asked for crypto donations using Bitcoin (BTC) and other tokens, but Durrani has called on using digital assets as a force for good in the face of what she considers to be ineffective sanctions. In the digital age, good samaritans have sometimes completely bypassed official sanctions imposed by the U.S. to donate directly to people impacted by war, famine, or other disasters in countries like Iran and Yemen.
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“Afghanistan can be put into those great lists of [the Financial Action Task Force] and all that,” said Durrani. “It could be one of those countries where you just start using cryptocurrency — legitimize it, whatever — but at the end of the day you're hurting the wrong kind of people to punish the people who are in power.”