GiveCrypto’s October Monthly Report
By: Joe Waltman
Tags: Blockchain, Charity, Nonprofit, Coinbase, Cryptocurrency

Overview

Donations — $13,926

People Impacted — 854

New Experiments — 7

Experiment Details

GiveCrypto’s short term focus has been rapid experimentation; we want to learn as much as possible about transferring cryptocurrency to people in need. Some of the early experiments were pretty basic; with modest goals like the recipient’s ability to receive and utilize crypto. We are already implementing more sophisticated experiments that test vectors like previous crypto activity, purchase/cash-out options, duration/size of transfers and macroeconomic conditions. Future experiments will continue to build upon the lessons learned from this work.

Below is a table of all experiments that ran in October followed by a brief overview of each experiment.

Zuck

Donate non-trivial amount ($50 USD) in BTC to four trusted individuals in Uganda; two nationals and two refugees. This was our first experiment and outcome tracking wasn’t well planned. Cancelled on Oct 22nd.

Solidity Training

Subsidizing solidity training courses for five computer savvy Somali refugees in Uganda. We will pay them $50 (paid in BTC) for completing the final course.

Sempo

Basic income of $75 per week (paid in DAI) for five Syrian refugee families living in Lebanon (Beirut). Also have a grocery store and pharmacy that accept payment in DAI for food/medicine.

Bonnum

Basic income of $1 per day (paid in EOS) for twenty Venezuelan refugee families in Paracaima, Brazil. Also have a bodega in a local church that accepts crypto payments for food and exchanges EOS for Brazilian fiat.

CryptoDiana

Paid a local Venezuelan to cold-call restaurants that accept crypto and pitch them on distributing $100 worth of food to local community. This was an attempt to scale the work that was done during the work-trial, but wasn’t successful. Cancelled on Oct 13th.

Coinbase Ambassador

Giving $100 (in ETH) to Coinbase employees and ask them distribute the funds to people in need.

Wala

Donating $20 (in DALA) to fifty different people in Uganda; twenty-five had previously used crypto and twenty-five are new to crypto. Next phase will involve an ambassador component; to see how/if they give to people in need.

Brito

Giving $10 (in BTC) to 100 different people in Venezuela. First redemption option is a food truck that will accept crypto for discounted meals. We are also subsidizing some of the software development for the recipient’s wallet.

AirTM

Giving $20 (in BTC) to 250 different people in Venezuela and Argentina. The recipients will be grouped by light (< 2 Tx per month) and heavy (> 2 Tx per month) activity users to see how the different groups behave.

Most of these experiments are still running and it would be premature to draw any definitive conclusions. But, we have already learned some (mostly intuitive) lessons.

Generosity is powerful — we all have an innate desire to help other people, most of us just lack the tools and resources

Crypto is confusing but almost all recipients have figured out how to receive, hold and use the funds

Food > medicine — although recipients asked for a pharmacy option (in the Sempo experiment), they all used the funds to purchase food

New crypto users convert to cash, existing crypto users are more likely to hold crypto or make crypto purchases

Ambassador Dapp

The ambassador dapp runs in the Coinbase Wallet and will allow anybody to donate funds on behalf of GiveCrypto. The first version of the application will be invitation based and restricted to individuals that are trusted by GiveCrypto partners.

The ambassador dapp is the first component of a larger ‘distributed charity’ platform. Our preliminary vision is that future enhancements might include components like:

Block tracking — scripts that analyze downstream transactions

Purchase validation — tools that validate use of proceeds

Identity verification — maximizing the likelihood that our recipients are who they say they are

Reputation scoring — maintaining a score of our users based on their behavior

Distribution dashboard — real-time, quantitative information about how funds are used

Content management system — collecting and distributing qualitative and visually appealing stories about how funds are used

Operational Foundation

We are beginning to create an operational foundation that will allow GiveCrypto to scale fundraising and donation efforts. The primary components of the operational platform are:

Financial system — NetSuite

Donor relationship management system — Salesforce NSP

Security/custody protocols — Coinbase Custody

Content management system — TBD

Fundraising

We have explicitly decided not to focus on fundraising for Q4 of 2018. We want to better define GiveCrypto’s strategy and create supporting content before we reach out to current/prospective donors. We feel like we are making good progress on both fronts and will be well positioned to begin fundraising in earnest in 2019.