Homelessness In A Cashless Society And How Cryptocurrency Can Help

Pay with your card, or even better, with your smart phone. It is extremely convenient: it is fast, readily available, and doesn’t require you to think about how much money you need to have in your pocket. What we often don’t think about are the implications that convenience has. Aside from the fact that in a cashless society backed by fiat, financial corporations become absolute rulers, the casualties of our convenience are the most transparent people on earth; those that by virtue of their misfortune are left behind and fall into an endless spiral of misery. Homeless people asking for a few cents in the corner down the street cannot take money from your credit card or your smart phone. This is where cryptocurrency can step in and become a game changer.

Cryptohomeless: A Few Sats Go a Long Way!

People in the cryptocurrency community have stepped up in a variety of ways. There are generous people within the community that have donated to more tech-savvy homeless people – notably the Bitcoin homeless man who held a “Bitcoin Only” sign with his address on it – but not enough who are willing to bridge the divide. That is beginning to change.

The Cryptohomeless blog, created by cryptophilly, takes donations in 8 different cryptocurrencies. Cryptophilly takes those donations and acts as the bridge between cryptocurrency and the homeless, buying meals and delivering them to those in need. The idea is not sophisticated; it might even be obvious considering some of the original goals of the Bitcoin community – to provide an alternative to the centralized fiat system and empower the individual by eliminating intermediaries. Nevertheless, the fact that someone took it up and implemented it, is revolutionary.

Who is Cryptophilly?

The best part of this whole story is that the person behind it, remains anonymous. There are only a few things we know about Cryptophilly:

• He or she was a student in Philadelphia until recently.
• There were homeless people in his or her family – according to the blog posts on the website.
• He or she is looking to do good deeds, in a selfless fashion as far as anyone can tell.

Basically, Cryptophilly is your every day Satoshi, quietly promoting crypto while becoming a bridge between the digital world of money and the physical world of basic goods for the homeless.

The Most Vulnerable Need Crypto the Most

The work that Cryptophilly is doing highlights the need for a solution to provide services to the unbanked. Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies are a great solution for the unbanked. Some say that they are rather a solution to “unbank” those who are banked. This is the core of the problem. Homeless people – part of the unbanked – generally, do not have the hardware necessary to use cryptocurrencies and circumvent the system that will completely ostracize them financially once cash is completely eliminated.

Therefore, it is necessary to keep on supporting initiatives like the one Cryptophilly launched. In the long-term, with the help of those in the cryptocurrency community, we might be able to empower the homeless with cheap smartphones so they can start managing their own crypto. Maybe that will help them in their struggle to improve their situation, while at the same time we help solidify cryptocurrency’s standing as the real alternative to the fiat system.