摘要： For remittances to continue to be a lifeline, they need to be fast. When money is needed, it is often needed instantly.

▲圖片標題(來源：EDUARD MUZHEVSKY/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY (opens in a new window)/ Getty Images)

Cryptocurrency remittances are a lifeline for Afghans after the abrupt U.S. withdrawal led to Western Union temporarily ceasing operations and banks in the country severely limiting withdrawals.

As regulators in remittance source countries like the U.S. and U.K. turn their sights on crypto, they should remember how indispensable those currencies are to some of the world’s most vulnerable people.

Crypto will become increasingly indispensable as the local currency — in Afghanistan and elsewhere — becomes not only difficult to access but unreliable as a store of value. Conflict fuels inflation, which makes currencies less valuable — sometimes worthless.

If we regulate cryptocurrency transfers to appease the crypto hawks at home, we risk turning our backs (again) on those who need this asset class the most: the Afghan people and many others like them.

With the Taliban takeover comes the freezing of Afghanistan’s financial system, too. Foreign aid has halted, which makes up approximately 40% of Afghanistan’s GDP, according to the World Bank. Similarly, foreign reserves of the Afghanistan central bank have been frozen, which is approximately $9 billion.

What’s more, in response to the Taliban’s takeover and Western countries halting foreign aid, international money transfer companies like Western Union and MoneyGram shut off their services (in some cases, they have resumed activity, for now), leaving the average Afghan with no way to engage with the global financial system and, crucially, no way to receive remittances from relatives abroad.

Remittances, the practice of sending money “back home” from rich countries, makes up approximately 4% of the country’s GDP. In an economy that is so heavily cash dependent, the sudden crumbling of the local financial infrastructure may well mean the difference between life and death for many Afghans.

For remittances to continue to be a lifeline, they need to be fast. When money is needed, it is often needed instantly. An internally displaced person, for example, cannot wait three to five days for funds to clear; they need food, fuel and medical supplies today.

Bitcoin “maximalists” make wide-eyed claims about how crypto will change the global economic system. Whether you believe them or not, we can see that crypto has already revolutionized remittances in unstable, conflict-ridden places. Afghanistan presents a textbook use case for cryptocurrencies in failed states.

Sometimes, sheer necessity creates the strongest argument for new tech. Afghanistan is 20th on the list of 154 countries in the Global Crypto Adoption Index formulated by Chainalysis, a blockchain data platform. When adjusted for peer-to-peer transactions (including remittances), it ranks seventh. In 2020, Afghanistan didn’t even make the list.

轉貼自： Tech Crunch

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