Bitcoin--The Humanitarian Case

It matters not where your assets live, it only matters where you contribute.

When I was a child, ZAR1.00 bought us US$1.25. Back then, for Americans to visit South Africa with Dollars — $1.00 bought them just ZAR0,75.

Today you get nearly ZAR20.00 for your $1.00 — and we’re very very lucky to not have lost more. Only our extreme mineral wealth and infrastructure bought back ‘then’ has saved us the worst ravages that an incompetent government has visited on us.

To our north lie countries that are basket cases. As depleted as we feel, we are their flight to safety.

But our country has been decimated by a brain drain that sucked the best educated abroad: Our finest people, educated at our taxed cost, have left.

And, we can't blame them. This country is a paradise. They left reluctantly because the economy has made it a haven of crime and little hope for the ambitious. Every expatriate leaves their homeland with a sense that they have no other option but to find a more stable economy on which to build and maintain wealth for their families and old age.

With inflation and poorly run currencies, anything one makes in a collapsing currency gets consumed by inflation (inflation is a hidden tax - which I'll cover in another essay).

When the smart people leave (South Africa, or Zimbabwe, or Mexico, or Venezuela)... the jobs they could have created disappear, and those left at home soon fall into poverty.

Those impoverished souls left behind eventually also have to leave to find work.

Once again, no poor person wants to become an economic refugee, banished from all that is familiar and consigned to foreign unfamiliar languages and cultures, subsisting in often hostile and impoverished quarters where survival on a stipend is a daily missery. Who would gladly not stay home if prospects there were only a little better.

Worse yet, for these poor wretches, even remitting their measly earnings back home to help keep family from destitution, the banks take days and charge up to 50% in fees to move cash across borders.

Using Bitcoin and a layer-2 like “Strike” for this remittance task is one massive gain, but better yet, the mere existence of Bitcoin’s infrastructure reaching any corner of the earth where internet is possible, makes it possible to slow and even halt the brain drain.

With the educated folks staying home, jobs and prosperity return. Here’s how:

In the "old days," like others with shaky currencies, affluent South Africans tried to get their hands on dollars or other 'real currencies' whenever they could. They’d stash this loot against the inevitable rainy day when the ZAR currency imploded. For most, it might not have been much, but at least there was a small peg in a foreign currency.

As I write this, Turkey, Lebanon, Venezuela, Zimbabwe and countless other embattled economies are deep in this collapsing currency nightmare.

But that strategy of holding Dollars is imperfect because, in an emergency, it's difficult and expensive to swap back into one's native currency.

Bitcoin to the rescue.

Bitcoin offers 24/7 liquidity to buy in and sell out of a rapidly appreciating asset. Its price moves can be volatile in the short term -- that is an opportunity to make money if one cares to understand the space. Volatility will subside with time. But the trajectory of price appreciation and the fundamentals going into the future make it an extremely asymmetric bet to bring stability to the developing world

The result.. people, can now live in poorly managed economies yet hold their assets in a global safe space, adding to or drawing from them as necessary. By remaining home, they bring jobs and prosperity and cause them to fight for a country rather than abandon it. It halts the significant population movements that cause tensions all over the world.

As a final thought: One of the greatest challenges that all charities face is the share of every dollar destined for those in need that get sucked away into administering that they get the help. Worse yet, bad actors with influence over financial institutions can act as gatekeepers, ensuring that those they deem as opponents can get no aid.

With crypto’s peer-to-peer mechanism and no gatekeeper the network doesn’t care if you’re a king or a pauper. All of the worst abuses and challenges evaporate—those in need acquire a wallet that no other party need know about, yet the contents of the wallet can be monitored by the donors, and every penny remitted to those wallets arrives without fee gouging.

Bitcoin and Crypto appeals to both ends of the political spectrum:

> To liberals it means more human rights and a more even playing field.

> To conservatives it means a dramatic slowdown in population movements and libertarian freedom from government interference.