UNICEF France has announced that it will start accepting donations in the Dai cryptocurrency, increasing the number of accepted cryptocurrencies to ten. Donations made in DAI, the announcement says, will go towards “creating bounties and funding research for open source tech and infrastructure projects, to help the world’s most vulnerable people.” UNICEF France has accepted cryptocurrency donations since September 2018 when they launched a crypto donation platform that included nine coins, although DAI is the first stablecoin they have accepted.
Le saviez-vous ❓ @UNICEF_france accepte les dons avec 9 #cryptomonnaies ➡ https://t.co/2BjegxAG1u
? @Bitcoin #bitcoin $BTC
? @ethereum #ethereum $ETH
? @litecoin $LTC
? @Ripple $XRP
? @BITCOlNCASH $BCH
? @Dashpay $Dash
? @monero $XMR
? @EOS_io $EOS
? @StellarOrg $XLM pic.twitter.com/X3NosWokBQ
— UNICEF France (@UNICEF_france) September 19, 2018
Tracking Donated Funds
Accepting money through cryptocurrencies isn’t just a way of widening the donation pool, it offers a glimpse into the potential solution to a widely acknowledged yet hard-to-tackle problem – charitable donation fraud. An audit by independent congressional body the U.S. Government Accountability Office found that as much as $1.4bn of the $6bn in emergency relief for Hurricane Katrina and Rita victims in 2005 went on improper or fraudulent payments. Using a blockchain system, anyone, from government officials to members of the public, would be able to see exactly where payments have gone, massively reducing wasted funds and fraud and offering a level of transparency that would be of benefit to everyone involved in the chain. The potential in using the blockchain and cryptocurrencies for such purposes is the reason why a number of charity-focus projects, such as GoHelpFund, Evimeria, and AidCoin, have been established.
Browser Mining for a Good Cause
UNICEF doesn’t just accept cryptocurrency, it also mines it. UNICEF Australia joined with The HopePage to launch an in-browser mining contribution app, where users donate a portion of their CPU processing power to help mine cryptocurrencies which The HopePage then sell and donate the proceeds to UNICEF, who use them for “safe water, therapeutic foods and vaccines.” Launched in April, the system, which works in much the same way as Bail Bloc, currently has around 20,000 users at any one time, who simply need to keep a tab open while they are working on their computer to donate their CPU power.
Using cryptocurrencies for projects such as this, and UNICEF France’s headline-making cryptocurrency donation tools, will help raise the profile of digital assets and encourage critics to view their rise in a more positive light.
