OmiseGo and Ethereum Founder Donate $1M to GiveDirectly

Despite several iterations, cryptocurrency is still severely criticized. In fact, the acceptability of these digital coins is always viewed with skepticism. Often, users of this currency are perceived as being selfish. People think that the crypto world is all about making and saving money. However, a recent happening has jolted the news world and the crypto haters. A popular charity, GiveDirectly, has received a US$1 million donation from Ethereum’s founder and OmiseGo.

Such charitable donations are worth highlighting as using cryptocurrency for this noble purpose is indeed something notable. Maybe this initiative will compel the haters to rethink their beliefs about crypto.

GiveDirectly received a US$1 million donation from the blockchain projects. GiveDirectly is a charity meant to aid the extreme poor via no-strings-attached grants.

In a recent blog post on its website, the charity revealed the details of the donation by Vitalik Buterin and OmiseGo. OmiseGo is a fintech startup that held an ICO last year, raising $25 million to develop a decentralized payment network.

GiveDirectly has received $1 million in OMG tokens, and will distribute it to refugees living below the poverty line.

Based in Uganda, GiveDirectly has helped 12,000 refugee households. Its campaign aims to provide funds to these refugees to help them grow businesses or take other steps requiring investment.

GiveDirectly Ventures are Supported By Tech Giants

Receiving donations from prominent sources is not something new for GiveDirectly. It is already backed by some tech giants, such as Dustin Moskovitz and Chris Hughes (Facebook’s co-founders), Google, and Pierre Omidyar (eBay’s founder). Since launching its donation drive in 2013, the company has raised more than $200 million.

Donations Will be Distributed to Refugees Directly

GiveDirectly, as its name suggests, distributes donations directly to refugees. Receiving crypto donations will further aid in their work. Catherine Diao, Head of Communications for GiveDirectly, says:

This is a major new chapter for us, entering the humanitarian space with a service to give money directly to refugees. We are really excited to be working with the leaders in the crypto community to translate some of the recent boons to impact for some of the poorest people in the world.

This doesn’t mean that the refugees will be burdened by crypto in its actual form. Rather, the money will be handed over to them after being converted to local currency. The conversion will be done by bank transfer or mobile money services. In this way, the refugees may be served in a better way.

Says Diao:

While cash transfers have been used in humanitarian contexts before, this initiative is a significant departure from the status quo because we’re giving families transformative amounts of money versus small, subsistence amounts.

OmiseGo’s Support for GiveDirectly

OmiseGo seems to have been excited about this collaboration. It shows immense interest in leveraging crypto for charity. In an official OmiseGo blog post, Omise’s CEO, Jun Hasegawa, said:

The crypto economy has grown immensely over the last year, bringing a great deal of wealth to many people and organizations within the ecosystem. In part, we simply see an exciting opportunity to share that wealth. We hope the fortunes made in the crypto space will lead not to extravagant lifestyles, but to extravagant generosity.

The company is also making room for GiveDirectly on its decentralized payment network that is currently under development. It will help users make instant transactions without any fees.

Althea Allen, OmiseGo’s ecosystem growth lead, says:

We have a strong desire to support GiveDirectly’s unconditional cash transfers on the OMG Network in the future when it becomes possible.

Are you interested in making a crypto donation to this charity? If so, you can send your ETH or ERC-20 tokens to the GiveDirectly wallet: 0xc7464dbcA260A8faF033460622B23467Df5AEA42