As of January 2019, we are 10 years from the original introduction of Bitcoin, the most recognizable cryptocurrency currently available. A digital currency that uses cryptography for security, cryptocurrency (and specifically, Bitcoin) operates peer-to-peer and without the authority of banks, allowing people to directly pay and receive payments without third party intervention. As we move toward more digital lives, and as technology increasingly becomes a part of our daily routine, we must begin to ask ourselves about the role of these advances in our lives and if they will help or hinder humanity’s progress.
In 2008, the creator of Bitcoin, the pseudonymous Satoshi Nakamoto, published their paper “Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System” to a cryptocurrency mailing list, and in early 2009 released the first Bitcoin software. The first recorded transaction of Bitcoin occurred in 2010 when developer Leszlo Hanyecz paid 10,000 bitcoin for two pizzas, an amount of bitcoin that today would be worth $100 million. In the years since that transaction, Bitcoins have increased and decreased in value, survived the hacking of the largest Bitcoin exchange, Mt. Gox, have been lauded as the future of money, and condemned as the next greatest scam. In the discipline of ethnic studies, interest in cryptocurrency lies in its potential within the international development sector: does cryptocurrency have the potential to be an economic equalizer or will it be another bandage for a problem too large to fix?
In Kenya, for example, in the last decade or so, the push in the development sector has been toward the economic system of microbusinesses. Often the target of these endeavors are women in the rural areas of the country who receive loans from a larger organization to start a business. For many of these businesses this model is a way for them to access an international community of potential buyers.
Take, for instance, a group of women selling beaded jewelry who must utilize a third party in order to exchange money. An individual in the U.S. can purchase a necklace through a website and the money is transferred, but it must first go through a third party to exchange the money: someone must have access to the bank account through which the money is being accepted. Once through the bank, money is given to the business itself. Problems arise when the women who are running the businesses do not have access to a bank account and therefore rely on someone within the community who does, or an outside, often international, source.
